ABSTRACT
Alina Marazzi is one of women film directors who have devoted their work to exploring the condition of women in contemporary Italian society. Tutto parla di te, Marazzi's first narrative film, continues her critique and reimagining of women's roles in Italy by focusing on maternal experience. The coexistence of loving and negative, at times destructive, feelings towards one's child is an unpopular topic in contemporary Italy owing to cultural anxieties caused by demographic changes and a return to traditional notions of motherhood. This chapter focuses on Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero's theory of relational subjectivity and British psychoanalyst Rozsika Parker's investigations into maternal ambivalence to show that Marazzi's innovative, multifaceted approach to representing maternal ambivalence succeeds in making it visible and in fostering dialogue on the matter. It analyses how the film's unique combination of visual languages presents maternal ambivalence as an ordinary experience many women live through, albeit in different ways, and have the potential to manage.
