Ups and downs Caterina va in città and Ascenseur pour l’échafaud BY GERALD PEARY

Chekhov’s three sisters fail to get to Moscow, but dreamy high-school teacher Giancarlo Iacovoni (Sergio Castellitto) manages to escape to Rome from the provincial town where he’s felt stifled, and to bring along his wife, Agata (Margherita Buy), and daughter, Caterina (Alice Teghil). For Giancarlo, life has a thrilling second act. He can teach in the fabulous metropolis where he grew up, and he has ambitions there for his beloved Caterina.

In Paolo Virzí’s Caterina va in città/Caterina in the Big City, a tender, intelligent Italian feature at the Brattle July 22-25, 15-year-old Caterina, shy and sheltered, is enrolled at a high-power Roman private school because her father wants her to mix with the scions of the ruling class. She’s obedient to his grandiose expectations, though the students mock her as a hillbilly from rural Tuscany. The set-up might remind you of Mean Girls, with face-offs at school between brash rich-girl cliques. But there’s a huge difference from the Hollywood model of teen conflict, for the quarrels here are ideological. Although all the other students are sinfully wealthy, they split heatedly left and right.

It’s the young Eurocommunists, Italy’s humanist Marxists, versus the young conservatives, supporters of the Berlusconi government. Our goodhearted heroine, however, is more concerned with making friends than with what the friends stand for. She’s first taken up by Margherita (Carolina Iaquaniello), bushy-haired and artsy, whose peace-activist mother takes the girls on a march that features an unexpected cameo from the barricades, Roberto Benigni as himself.

Things mess up with Margherita, so Caterina, without a blink, moves rightward to (as described by the movie’s publicity material) "a circle of rich, cell-phone-toting mall rats." She takes up shopping and hanging out in patrician castles. A new best pal is Daniela (Federica Sbrenna), a 24-hour party girl with an on-call chauffeur and a limousine. Daniela’s father is a bigwig in the conservative government. At a celebration of Berlusconi supporters with obvious Mafia ties, everybody gives the Fascist salute. Even Daniela.

What happened to that once-grounded teen who found happiness singing choral music? Far more terrible is the plight of her dad, Giancarlo, whose beloved Rome chews him up and spits him out. His new teaching gig falters, and nobody in big-city publication will consider his erotic novel. Maddened, he rails against the powerful. "They ignore us," he wails. "They treat us like toys."

Virzí, the son of a Sicilian police officer, situates himself as "a long-time supporter of a popular, optimistic, and non-catastrophic left." He feels for Giancarlo’s despair but sides with Caterina, who’s capable of straightening out.

French filmmaker Louis Malle (1932-1995) did his best at the end, with his masterly collaborations in America, My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street. In France he made efficient arthouse movies with Big Themes (incest, France under the Occupation) shot in a rather impersonal, accessible way. Ascenseur pour l’échafaud/Elevator to the Gallows, a 1958 film that’s being revived at the Kendall Square, is the reverse of his 1960s and 1970s work: all form and little content or meaning. This neo-noir of a night in Paris with two criss-crossed murders is 100 percent mood: Miles Davis’s dazzling improv trumpet playing on the soundtrack, ambient black-and-white cinematography from the great Henri Decaë, shot after shot of Jeanne Moreau’s astoundingly chameleonic face as she searches through sketchy locales for her missing criminal lover. Although it’s quite fun, none of this has metaphysical resonance — it’s just a post-grad exercise in showing off by the then 24-year-old Malle.

Gerald Peary | gpeary@geraldpeary.com