Not Just Married to the Mob: Italy’s Crime Stories Open Up to Women

variety.com:

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentThe mob in Italy, besides being an endemic plague, has always been grist for the film and TV mill, with gritty Naples-set show “Gomorrah,” the country’s top TV export, being one recent example.But a major change is underway in how Italian producers and talents are tackling organized crime tropes that were once exclusively imbued in patriarchal pathos.

Mob stories coming out of Italy are primarily a woman’s thing these days. Or, rather, the perspective is a female one.Take Amazon’s recently launch­­ed Italian original “Bang Bang Baby,” the 1980s Milan-set tale of 16-year-old Alice Barone (rising star Arianna Becheroni), who while living with her single mom learns by chance that her dad, whom she thought dead, is very much alive and a boss of the Calabrian crime syndicate known as the ’Ndrangheta.

Against her mother’s wishes, she joins the dark side of her family, bonding with her paternal grandmother, the feisty Nonna Guendalina Barone, who is also an ’Ndrangheta boss.

The criminal granny is played by Dora Romano, known to audiences outside Italy as the matriarch who eats mozzarella with her hands and spouts vulgarities in Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God.”“If any vile bastard gets in the way, I’ll dissolve him in acid, so help me God!,” Nonna Barone blurts out at one point.The pulpy “Bang Bang” is produced by “The Young Pope” and “My Brilliant Friend” producer Lorenzo Mieli, who notes that, like “Gomorrah,” it’s loosely rooted in reality.