Edoardo Gabbriellini’s Holiday rejoices in upturning expectations. Set in a paradisiacal seaside hotel in Italy, the film follows 20-year-old Veronica (Margherita Corradi), who has just been released from prison after being found innocent of murdering her mother and her mother’s lover. The murder took place when Veronica was 18, and though the courts acquitted her, most others in her town believe her to be guilty. The only ones stolidly on Veronica’s side are her father (Alessandro Tedeschi) and her best friend Giada (Giorgia Frank).
The thing is, Veronica’s mother was beautiful — statuesque, thin, graceful, blonde. Veronica, meanwhile, is a bit shorter, brunette, mousy. In the court of public opinion, Veronica is doubly guilty, not only for suspected matricide, but for snuffing out a beauty most others believe she was jealous of. The film cunningly prods and interrogates traditional notions of femininity, the innocence, grace, and divinity we traditionally associate with beauty, while also commenting on the impossible bind patriarchy places women in.
Through flashbacks to the day of the murder two years prior, along with courtroom testimony during Veronica’s trial, the audience learns that Veronica’s mother was inexplicably cruel to Veronica. Her mother carried on with various affairs and fought incessantly with Veronica’s father, who clearly loves and favors Veronica. With the past and present hazily braided together, we watch Veronica attempt to survive in the face of a cruelty that threatens at every turn to rob her of the opportunity to be young and free.
Certain aspects of the film eerily reminded me of the infamous Amanda Knox, who in 2007, as an exchange student in Perugia, Italy, was accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox has since been acquitted, cleared of all charges and declared to have been wrongfully accused. When her trial was taking place in 2007, it was a sensation, with many in the public sphere making up their minds about Knox’s character based purely on her looks or the life she lived online or the impression that she was a carefree American. Because she was conventionally attractive and posted about partying, many simply assumed she must have been guilty, for the idea of a beautiful woman hurting another beautiful woman seemed so lasciviously enticing to the public’s mind; many simply assumed one woman hurt the other out of some sick jealousy, perhaps to appease a man. The court of public opinion turned Knox into a femme fatale. There were misogynistic ideas at play with Knox, ascribing guilt based on superficial conclusions and prevailing lewd (and sexist) ideas about a woman’s motivations. The public built up fantastical and salacious and sensationalist narratives about Knox without any factual merit.
Something similar, but compellingly upturned and nuanced, takes place in Gabbriellini’s film. Veronica is likewise turned into a femme fatale by the public. When she goes out partying after she has been released from prison, because she is young and wants a taste of the freedom that was denied her for two years, the public assumes she must be a sicko, must be guilty, that her partying must be a signifier of her guilt the courts missed, because how could a young woman want to party after her mother’s been killed.
The dynamics of the Knox case are inverted in Holiday, with the blonde, fragile woman a victim of the brunette woman. Where the public thought of Knox that she was a beautiful and conniving femme fatale capable of murder, the public in Veronica’s case think she is guilty and conniving because she was jealous of her mother’s beauty. The film stunningly depicts how easy it is for society to renege certain ascriptions when it serves patriarchal notions. In traditional patriarchal ideology, white, blonde women are considered Madonnas, innocent and sweet and all light, and this is the case in Holiday. But in Amanda Knox’s case, it becomes evident that it is just as easy for society to see the thin, beautiful white woman as malicious. No woman can win, can remain safe within the court of a sexist public’s opinion.
Gabbriellini reveals the double bind patriarchy places women in — we are presumed guilty within a misogynistic landscape regardless of all other factors, simply because we are women. Holiday doesn’t much care about who the real culprit of the gruesome murder is; what the film seems to be stressing is the fact that it’s impossible for women to win, to stay safe within patriarchy.
