Tribeca: "Italian Studies" review

by Jason Adams

About a year after I first moved to New York a friend pulled me aside at a party to tell me two secrets about a mutual acquaintance of ours. The first secret was that this mutual was secretly fabulously wealthy, which one never would have guessed from the way she presented herself -- after twenty years of living in NYC I've come across this type often enough that it doesn't seem novel anymore, but it surprised me then. But it was the second secret that has really stuck with me all these years -- this friend would occasionally take a week off from her life, check into a high-scale hotel uptown, and pretend to be a different person. She told stories of romances and adventures in disguise -- a dalliance outside of one's daily existence; a vacation from one's literal self.

The second secret obviously couldn't exist without the first one -- only a rich person would be able to do such a thing -- but it struck me then and now as the most genuine benefit of wealth I'd ever heard. Rolexes are pretty, but the ability to actually escape, to slough off your worries and cares and just live somebody else's life for a collection of minute sounds priceless. I thought of those secrets watching Adam Leon's meditative new film Italian Studies at Tribeca this week, which stars the ever-riveting Vanessa Kirby...

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