Io e lei 2015 Movie Review

『A Sincere Story of Two Women Who Love Differently and Confront Themselves』

🎥 Movie Overview

🎬 Title: Io e lei (Me, Myself and Her, 2015)
🌍 Country: 🇮🇹 Italy
🎞️ Genre: Drama / Romance / Social Realism
⏳ Runtime: 98 minutes
📢 Director: Maria Sole Tognazzi
🖋️ Screenplay: Maria Sole Tognazzi, Tommaso Matano

👩‍💼 Cast: Margherita Buy – Federica Salvini
Sabrina Ferilli – Marina Baldi

🧩 Deep Story Exploration (Spoilers)

💔 Identity Confusion and the Reality of Relationships: Crisis of a Middle-Aged Queer Couple

Me, Myself and Her centers on Federica and Marina, two middle-aged women who have lived together in Rome for five years, exploring the clash between the stability of love and the instability of personal identity.

🌈 Stark Contrast in Personality and Identity

The tension in their relationship arises from their opposing personalities and pasts.

• Marina: Liberated Self
  • A former famous actress and now a successful restaurant owner, she is confident and completely open about her sexual identity.
  • She does not hesitate to make her relationship with Federica public, and she longs for their relationship to be fully recognized by society.
• Federica: Anxious Double Life
  • A successful architect who was previously married and has an adult son. While she deeply loves Marina, she rejects labeling herself as a lesbian (or bisexual) and hides their relationship from her colleagues.
  • Her repeated insistence of "I’m not a lesbian" symbolizes internalized homophobia and fear of social judgment, which cast a shadow of insecurity over their relationship.

🌟 Beginning of the Crisis: Public Exposure and Inner Escape

Their crisis begins when Marina, during a magazine interview, publicly mentions her relationship with Federica.

• Pressure of Coming Out: For Marina, this is natural, but for Federica it feels like the destruction of her carefully maintained “false identity” as a heterosexual. Afraid of social condemnation, Federica fiercely criticizes Marina’s actions.

• Escape into Infidelity: At the peak of their tension, Federica unexpectedly reunites with Marco, a man she once felt attracted to, and engages in a reckless affair. This is not merely infidelity, but rather Federica’s desperate attempt to prove to herself that she is “still heterosexual” and to avoid embracing a lesbian identity. The film shows how crises in heterosexual couples and queer couples intersect, but the fact that her affair is with a man intensifies her identity dilemma.

💥 Fluidity of Identity and the Midlife Crisis

The film’s most important contribution is how it portrays the complexity and fluidity of sexual identity from a middle-aged perspective.

• A heterosexual’s queer relationship: Federica’s struggle symbolizes the inner turmoil of someone who, in a heteronormative society, discovers a queer identity later in life. In her fifties, she feels pressured to “redefine” her life, while decades of ingrained social norms make this process painful.

• The importance of “normalization”: The film spends significant time showing that in the conservative backdrop of Italy, queer couples live “ordinary” daily lives. They share an apartment, exchange beauty products, and watch TV together on the sofa. This normalization of daily life illustrates that queer couples, like heterosexual ones, struggle and argue about relationship problems, shifting the focus from identity itself to the universality of relationships.

💘 Ending and Aftermath: The Power of Love and Realistic Compromise

When Marina discovers Federica’s affair, she is furious but ultimately demands that Federica make a final choice.

• Preserving the relationship: The film ends with the two women reconciling and deciding to continue their relationship. While some critics argue that the ending feels predictable and too neatly resolved, the director’s intention was to show “love as a force that overcomes personal turmoil and external pressure.”

• The strength of the leading actresses: The film’s greatest asset is the nuanced and powerful performances by Italy’s acclaimed actresses Margherita Buy and Sabrina Ferilli. They skillfully capture subtle emotional shifts and tension, breathing life into a plot that could otherwise feel formulaic.

📚 Me, Myself and Her may not present a flawless queer romance, but it authentically portrays two women struggling to protect their love amid midlife crisis, the complexity of sexual identity, and the conservatism of Italian society.

🎯 Personal Rating

💕 Love Scene Intensity: ♥
⭐ Rating: ★★★★