Cuore sacro (2005)

Successful manager Irene Ravelli has managed, with the help of her aunt Eleonora, her business partner, to have the seizure of the old family palace lifted. She intends to use it for business purposes. Returning to the palace for another inspection, Irene meets Aurelio, the elderly caretaker, who shows her the room of Irene’s mother, Adriana. It has remained unchanged since her death, as though she still lived there. Strange writings and meaningless symbols are carved into the walls. The room also contains numerous religious images that may point to the woman’s religious syncretism. Outside the palace, Irene meets Benny, an impertinent young girl who uses a trick to steal her wallet. Irene promptly catches up with her, and Benny makes things right by offering to pay for Irene’s dinner the next time they meet. Later, Irene and Eleonora visit Maria Clara, Irene’s alcoholic aunt, who is staying at a rehabilitation center. Maria Clara’s signature is needed for work on the palace to begin. She refuses to sign, however, despite threats from her sister Eleonora to have her declared legally incompetent. Some time later, Irene meets Benny again. While they are together, Irene points out a small toy giraffe, similar to one she had as a child. Later, the girl asks Irene to help her deliver bags, filled with things bought at the supermarket before dinner, to certain addresses in the neighborhood. Though she initially refuses, Irene agrees and comes for the first time into contact with a world unknown to her, marked by extreme poverty in a Rome that seems like a Court of Miracles, apparently inhabited only by the destitute and a few very rich, ruthless women. After a series of events, Irene discovers that Benny is connected to the volunteer work of Father Carras’s church. Benny denies, however, that she is looking after those people on the parish priest’s orders. In fact, Father Carras had reprimanded her several times, asking her instead to persuade those people to go to the soup kitchen. Irene and Benny eventually spend the night together in the palace, but the next morning the girl has disappeared, leaving the manager a note challenging her to find her. After Aunt Maria Clara agrees to let the work begin, Irene discovers that Benny was hit and killed by a car while fleeing after stealing a small toy giraffe. Feeling responsible for the girl’s death, as well as for the suicide of the Marchetti couple, from whom she had acquired a bankrupt company, Irene is plunged into a deep inner conflict. Guided by Benny’s spirit and seeking her mother’s spirituality, Irene begins caring for the poor alongside Father Carras, devoting herself to them wholeheartedly. She turns the family palace into a soup kitchen and uses her money to give people public-housing apartments, compromising her business acumen in the process. This worries her aunt Eleonora, who considers Irene “crazy,” like Adriana. Father Carras partly agrees with Eleonora, seeing Irene’s behavior as a form of self-punishment. Irene, however, believes she can rediscover her faith among those in need rather than in the various places of worship. The priest then takes her to visit the many homeless people living among Rome’s ruins and asks how she can be so presumptuous as to believe she can save them all without organized help—help that only official recognition of her work by the Church can provide. After looking at all those people, Irene strokes the parish priest and, as if in a trance, goes to the subway. Looking at the countless people there, she slowly begins to shed everything she owns: her jewelry, shoes, and clothes, until she is naked. Hospitalized with an admission diagnosis of “dissociative identity disorder with uncontrollable altruistic impulses,” Irene is examined by a psychiatrist, who considers her sane and is struck by her and her altruism. In the final scene, among the old furniture piled up in the family palace, there is a portrait of Adriana—the only image left of the woman, who had never allowed herself to be photographed while alive—and it bears Benny’s features.