‘Mafia Mamma’ a high-concept comedy film in which a timid American Woman (Toni Collette) with a thankless marketing job, cheating husband and son who’s just left for college becomes the head of the Cosa Nostra in Italy after her “vintner” grandfather is gunned down — was not a stretch.
Catherine Hardwicke says she always wants to “elevate” the films she’s directing.
“When I did Twilight, I really wanted to feel the romance. I wanted to feel that crush, that first love and the ecstatic feeling”, she tells us in a new interview. “In Thirteen, I wanted you to feel how the hormones are raging and what it feels like to be a kid, when everything matters”.
About ‘God Father’, Catherine Hardwicke told Yahoo Entertainment: “Well, I love The Godfather, and I love what Francis Ford Coppola did, so I never thought I would do a movie like that. But a bizarro feminist twist on The Godfather? Hell yeah”.
Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci and Catherine Hardwicke tell @djkevlar how their new mob comedy #MafiaMamma puts a "bizarro feminist twist" on The Godfather. pic.twitter.com/eIuOL0RZkE
— Yahoo Entertainment (@YahooEnt) April 13, 2023
If Mafia Mamma is Hardwicke’s bizzarro feminist Godfather, then Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, Hereditary) is its Michael Corleone. (Though a running joke in the movie is that Collette’s Kristin has never even seen Coppola’s 1972 classic or its equally beloved sequel).
Collette never thought she’d be The Godmother, “But I’m really happy that I am!,” she professes. “I had the time of my life making this movie. Making this movie was just absolutely blissful. Honestly, I think not only is it a career highlight in terms of the experience, but it’s a life highlight for me. I really just loved my time in Italy… It was just honestly the most fun I’ve had at work”.
Guiding Kristin as she takes over the family business is another powerful woman, the firm’s consigliere Bianca, played by Monica Bellucci. The Italian actress (Malena, The Matrix sequels) was especially drawn to the film’s gender twist.
“We’re in a male-dominated society, and these women, they have to fight to protect themselves”, she says. “And behind the comedy, there is incredible meaning”.
Indeed, while the film is filled with fish-out-of-water laughs and hijinks, its not hard to gauge its central metaphor: an insecure woman finally finding empowerment in a patriarchal world after literally being empowered to run the mafia.
Mafia Mamma is now playing.
Watch the trailer:
