Adele Tulli’s elegantly deadpan documentary challenges the sexual stereotypes that prevail across the generations
Adele Tulli’s quizzically entitled film, Normal, is an elegantly composed, pleasingly shot series of vignettes, presented in a documentary style that I think of as anthropo-deadpan – the Austrian film-maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter is a master of this. Tulli is taking issue with the normality of sexual stereotypes as they are manufactured in
Italy, from toddlerhood to early middle age. It is well made and there are some very startling moments, although I wonder if, in the end, this film is a beautifully made sermon to the choir.
A seraphically calm and heartbreakingly sweet little girl submits (with face in extreme closeup) to having earrings attached by a doctor; a boy prepares for a speedway event with his dad cheering lustily from the sidelines; a plastics factory turns out plastic moulds for irons, and then we see a pink-coloured plastic doll’s house set for girls – stomach-turningly, it includes a dinky little pink spray canister for cleaning ovens. Teenage girls gather swooningly around a boy pop star; a guy receives alpha-male conversational coaching for picking up women.