Lidia Poët lives again. The charm of Matilda De Angelis – Corriere.it is not enough

What a gamble! Taking a true story from the end of the 19th century, with considerable social implications, and having the actors act as if they were in the present day, putting contemporary phrases and interjections into the protagonist’s mouth. They are those operations of estrangement which, if successful, can touch the sublime. Otherwise, it borders on the ridiculous. Netflix presents “The law of Lidia Poët”, inspired by the figure of a woman who fought a long battle to see her right to practice as a lawyer affirmed, also fighting for the vote for women. The reasoning with which the Court of Appeal of Turin denied her the exercise of the profession is curious: women must devote themselves to something else, namely the family and children, even women’s clothing is difficult to reconcile with the austerity of the toga.

But let’s get to the series: produced by Matteo Rovere, «La legge di Lidia Poët» takes advantage of a splendid Turin setting (the Film Commission Torino Piemonte has fantastic scenarios at its disposal; I recognized Palazzo Falletti Barolo); the costumes are of rare workmanship; photography is very attentive to the play of light, but one thing is missing. The writing is missing: the charm of Matilda De Angelis is not enough, the battle for the emancipation of women’s rights and against the bigotry of the time is not enough, the “message” is not enough. The process through which an idea takes shape in the narrative structure, in the dialogues, in the breath of the shots, in the temperature of the acting is absent. The authors wanted to re-read the true story of Lidia Poët, Italy’s first lawyer, in a light procedural key. That is, they remade Murder, She Wrote, with bold sex and profanity. It is curious that Tinny Andreatta, after having emancipated the Rai fiction, tries hybrid solutions for the Netflix platform with the “old” one-shot episodes.