The Nanny (1999) poster
1999 · drama · period · pirandello

The Nanny

Directed by Marco Bellocchio1h 46m1999
  • sombre
  • measured

Rome, early 20th century: a wealthy psychiatrist, who runs an asylum for women and lacks imagination in his practice, must find a wet nurse for his infant when his wife panics after childbirth. He brings a peasant, Annette, to Rome, forcing her to leave her own baby behind. To the consternation and increasing anger of the wife, the nanny immediately bonds with the couple's infant son - Annette's a natural. Against a backdrop of leftist demonstrations, Annette, who's lover is a teacher jailed for subversion, asks the doctor to teach her to read and write. Her nature and curiosity, the doctor's bland ideas, he and his wife's problems, and the two infants bring the story to a head.

Our read · The Nanny (1999) reads as a sombre, measured, grounded drama · period · pirandello entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Cast
Fabrizio BentivoglioValeria Bruni TedeschiMaya SansaJacqueline LustigPier Giorgio Bellocchio
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The shape of The Nanny

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Geometric closeness in the twelve-axis space — pure DNA distance, not “people also liked.” Distance numbers are listed under each title for sceners who like to know the maths.

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