The White Space (Lo Spazio Bianco)

Margherita Buy gives a towering performance as a middle-aged teacher who unexpectedly falls pregnant after a brief affair in the compelling new drama from Francesca Comencini (The Words of My Father IFF10). THE WHITE SPACE was an official selection screening in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2009 where Buy won Best Actress.

Maria (Buy) is a footloose, middle-aged divorcee. Having moved to Naples, she teaches Italian to adults at evening classes until an affair leads to an unplanned pregnancy. When the child arrives prematurely, she moves into a hospital's special-care unit, introducing her to a world of women in similar situations. This brilliant adaptation of Valeria Parrella's much-praised novel offers a sensitive portrait of a complex woman attempting to take back control of her own life, no matter what the price.

The thematic richness and subtlety of THE WHITE SPACE is sublime, Francesca Comencini directs with style and sensitivity equally matched, and while Buy's performance as an assertive, confident woman who has lost her bearings is a master class in fine acting, her co-star, the city of Naples, in all its up-and-down hills, winding streets and rippling waters, proves just as expressive in conveying the meandering fluctuations of life.