‘Cabrini’ Review: Lifeless Religious Drama Chronicles Hardships Faced by Determined Italian Nun Who Fought for Immigrants
variety.comCarlos Aguilar Embraced by Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, last year’s “Sound of Freedom” racked up over $250 million worldwide and brought Mexican-born director Alejandro Monteverde back in the spotlight almost two decades after his awfully saccharine 2006 debut “Bella” won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF.
A filmmaker with an unabashedly Christian conservative agenda, Monteverde’s latest is a frustratingly sluggish biopic of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini (Cristiana Dell’Anna), an Italian nun who defied the Catholic Church, as well as American institutions, to aide her countrymen in New York City during the late 1800s.
All of Cabrini’s past is reduced to an incident in her childhood where she nearly drowned. That she survived and continued to outlive her post-tuberculosis prognosis propels her to prove wrong anyone who suggests she doesn’t belong in any male-dominated space.
After a meeting with Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) to discuss her plans to build orphanages in China, the Holy Father, an admirer of her conviction, tasks her with crossing the Atlantic to bring help and hope to mostly illiterate Italian migrants, particularly children living in dehumanizing conditions, faced with rampant xenophobia and a lack of health services.
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