Film Review: "Nonnas"
The new Netflix film is a lovely, warm, and heartfelt story about grief, food, and the pleasures of family and table.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
I think we can all agree that there’s an intrinsic connection between grandmas and food. Who among us doesn’t have a memory or a dozen of a special meal that only their grandmother could make? For me, it’s my late grandma’s chili and, to this day, I have yet to be able to imitate or even come close to her chili, despite years of trying and following her recipe to the letter. For my grandma, as for many Appalachian women of her generation, food was a way of showing her love.
Given my love of food movies and my love of movies about elderly people (including and especially elderly ladies), I knew that I was going to have to watch Nonnas, the new movie from Netflix. Based on a true story, it stars Vince Vaughn as Joe Scaravella, whose grief over his mother’s death spurs him to start a restaurant on Staten Island that will be staffed by nonnas (grandmothers) who will do the cooking and bring a note of authenticity and history to the cuisine. He recruits several nonnas amd, after some stops and starts, he eventually sees his dream come to fruition.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of Vince Vaughn, but I surprisingly found him bearable, even charming, in this film. He’s dialed back most of his annoying mannerisms and, while I didn’t find myself ever really liking his character, I did find that he was fairly adept at capturing the grief a son feels at the loss of his mother. Joe’s story is, to be sure, a sympathetic and poignant one, for who among us hasn’t felt cast adrift by the death of a loved one, desperate to find some meaning in the world and to do something impactful to honor their legacy? Vaughn hits most of the right notes, though I will admit that I find him less than inspiring as a romantic hero, I do appreciate that the film includes just the right dash of romance.
More moving in this regard is Linda Cardellini, who plays the young widow Olivia, Joe’s former high school crush. Just as she did in Dead to Me, Cardellini captures the complexities and emotional nuances of grief. You can see the raw vulnerability behind her eyes when she finally tells Joe that her husband is dead, her voice trembling ever-so-slightly as she tells him how it was Antonella who came to her rescue when all she wanted to do was give in to her sorrow. Cardellini gives the romance plot its necessary poignance, and this side plot adds a further bit of texture to the film’s exploration of grief and how it can both keep us shackled to the past and how it can inspire us to move forward into a brighter future.
Appropriately, Nonnas really shines when it allows us to spend time with the nonnas. Joe’s mother’s best friend Roberta (Lorraine Bracco) is the first of his recruits, and it’s clear that beneath that brittle, hoarse-voiced exterior there’s a woman who has her own fair share of demons. This doesn’t keep her from locking horns with Brenda Vaccaro’s Antonella, and it’s nothing short of a delight to see these two trading insults–many of which stem from the fact that Roberta is from Sicily and Antonella is from Bologna–and engaging in a food fight. Bracco and Vaccaro have amazing chemistry together, expertly capturing the good-natured curmudgeonliness that seems to be a key character trait among Italian women of a certain age.
Just as remarkable are the two other nonnas who join the restaurant. I may not be Susan Sarandon’s biggest fan when it comes to her political activism, but there’s no doubt that she’s a hell of an actress. Her Gia is a woman who has been through her own fair share of heartache–she lost both of her breasts to a double mastectomy and has long endured the opprobrium of women who are threatened by her obvious sexuality–but she has a good heart and a frank way of speaking that’s like a breath of fresh air. Just as complex is Talia Shire’s Teresa, a former nun who admits that her one true love was a woman. Shire’s is one of the subtler performances in the film and, given her former religious vocation, she serves a balance to the other larger personalities that tend to dominate the restaurant.
My favorite scene in the entire film is when the nonnas all gather in Gia’s salon for a makeover, after which they drink and celebrate their lives. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I live for these kinds of moments. I love watching older women find strength and solace in one another’s company, particularly since so much of popular culture tends to both ignore older women and encourage women of all ages to see one another as competition rather than as comfort. I was particularly touched by the extent to which the women engage with one another without judgment or condemnation.
And then there’s the food. This is a film that is, after all, about the healing power of food, and if you love movies where there’s a lot of attention to the texture and aesthetic of food, then Nonnas is definitely for you. If I wasn’t already a huge fan of Italian cuisine, I certainly would be after watching this film. Stephen Chbosky has the knack for allowing the camera to convey the beauty and the richness of everything from pasta to cannoli and everything in between.
Nonnas is, I think, a bit of a throwback to the 1990s and the early 2000s, when every year we’d be blessed with some kind of cuisine-centric film to lose ourselves in. Indeed, though Nonnas is a bit long–clocking in at just under two hours–I never felt that it dragged. It’s just one of those films that you find yourself willing to lose yourself in, spending time with these bickering nonnas and their delicious food.
Moreover, we watch a movie like Nonnas because we know that it’s going to have a happy ending, that all of Joe’s sacrifices and those of the nonnas are going to pay off, that he’s going to get the girl, get the restaurant, and do right by his late mother and grandmother. This is exactly what happens, but just because it’s predictable doesn’t mean that we can’t also feel moved by this happy ending. More to the point, I also appreciated the way that the film reminds us all to hold tight to our loved ones, to cherish the memories and the love they give us, even as it also reminds us that it’s okay to grieve, so long as our sorrow doesn’t swallow our present and the future.