by Roosa Toivonen
UK/USA/Italia/Finlandia, 2010, 90'
21 st. Century Miracles (USA)
19-year old Cabella has never known her parents and has lived with her non-related Uncle Max for as long as she can remember. When Max dies and his upper-class relatives claim everything, Cabella only gets an old key that Max has left for her in secret. Sad and without much to look forward to, she travels to Italy and finds a run-down villa in a little village where she starts to live as she has nowhere else to go...
Little by little Cabella starts to fit into the life of the village. She turns the house liveable and makes friends with three local sisters. The oldest of the sisters, Maria, is smitten with mysterious, aristocratic Lord Jai, a young Indian man who lives in the village castle. Middle sister Sophia is a budding artist who roams the woods and mountaintops, painting wildlife and little sister Giulia waits for the man of her dreams every day at the village bus, but no one ever comes.
In her new home, Cabella befriends a 9 year-old chimney sweeper who died in the house long ago. With the ghost’s and the sisters’ help, she begins to discover more about the enigmatic woman who lived in the house before and whose clothes she has been wearing ever since she moved in. As the mysteries slowly unfold Cabella rediscovers her joie de vivre, as do many others in whose life she has suddenly drifted.
The Italian Key portrays a journey of self-discovery, friendship and love in a nostalgic Italian mountain village.