The College Fix

Is the film worthy of the story?

That is the question that must be asked, and answered, about “The Sicilian Girl” ­— and every other film based on a true story. After all, fiction isn’t fiction when the characters are real. But let’s save the answer until I’m done rambling.

The Sicilian Girl is based on the true story behind the downfall of the Sicilian Mafia in the early 1990s. Anyone familiar with the time period knows that the downfall was as grotesque as it was bloody, and a time when the violence hinted at by so many Hollywood films was an ugly reality.

Some government authorities, prosecutors and  their family members were intimidated, tortured, brutalized and ultimately killed by the Mafia, who tried to stave off the not-so-inevitable. The Mafia eventually went down but it dragged many poor souls as its centuries-old charade collapsed on its head.

Among the persecuted was Rita Atria (Veronica D’Agostino), the 17-year-old informant whose testimony is largely considered responsible for bringing down the Cosa Nostra. Her diaries — kept since her father’s death — were the lynchpin of the prosecution’s case against the Mafia, revealing the complicated web of lies and deceit that bound the Mafia together.

Her story is one of confrontation and loss as she seeks to avenge the murders of her father and her eldest brother, both of whom were killed by the order of the reigning Don Salvo (Mario Pupella). This is the motivation for her diaries, written with the knowledge that they would one day see the light in a court of law.

Revenge, however, is hardly that simple. Her father was a mob boss, killed for refusing to enter the drug trade. Her brother was his heir, bred for the bloody responsibilities of leadership, killed just as he emerged as a threat to the status quo.

Read the full review at the Daily Trojan.

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