What is a good reason to want to die?
The eponymous main character of “Miele” has built a career out of avoiding that question. Her real name is Irene, and she cuts a striking figure as a modern–day, boyish angel of death: On secret trips to Mexico, she buys veterinary barbiturates to smuggle to Italy, then administers them to terminally ill patients who want painless deaths. She sees her job as one of comfort. She does not debate the morality.
In between trips to Mexico and fatal cocktails, scenes of Irene’s deliberately detached personal life unfold. In some of the film’s most artful scenes, director Valeria Golino presents Irene through real–world barriers: the ocean during her increasingly frantic morning swims; her headphones, as much a shield as they are entertainment; a panel of glass separating her from a man of passing interest at a party. Irene hangs on to these, but her fierce detachment cannot last forever. The walls fall sooner rather than later when the aging Carlo requests her services. Upon finding out that Carlo is not terminally ill at all—just bored with life—Irene is furious. Boredom, she tells him, does not warrant suicide. But what does? Their relationship forces her to confront the hazy morality of her job and to reevaluate her own life.
“Miele” walks a fine line between being delicate and being boring. Lead actress Jasmine Trinca’s face is undoubtedly beautiful, but there are only so many close–ups of her tortured eyes the movie can hold without becoming bloated. Somewhere in the middle, the morality and riveting character drama gets lost in a progression of unneeded scenes: The recurring flashbacks of her mother are pretty, but not particularly substantive; her frequent walks to Carlo’s house—which the filmmaker captures again and again—soon become forgettable.
After watching “Miele,” I’m tempted to call it a film about death. The main conflict of the movie, the recurring narrative about Irene’s mother and much of the dialogue certainly present it as such. But “Miele” is most engaging when it allows the strength of its main character to drive the film instead of asking and wearing the reader out with thematic elements. “Miele” is not a film about death. “Miele” is a film about life—about one woman’s struggle to find meaning when the things she lives for suddenly become blurry.
Grade: B Runtime: 96 min. See if you liked: “L’Enfant”
