Timely Faces

The chapter deals with the analysis of the representation of the faces of the protagonists of three films, La vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 (Kechiche, 2013), Jeune femme (Serraille, 2017) and Chiara Ferragni – Unposted (Amoruso, 2019), which are symbolic of how people of our time think, at least in the Italian cultural context. These works, in fact, acquire their significance because they embody two opposing cultural models: that of the vagabond and that of the self-made man or woman. These cultural models and the way they are used say a lot about how our strategies for assigning meaning to our existence are changing. Such meaning is no longer viewed as a direction to follow, as a life project to be realised at all costs, but as something to be found a posteriori, between the folds of the thousands of experiences we have. To demonstrate this, in addition to analysing these three films, their reviews, and their connection with other texts are studied, to contextualise them within today’s Italian cultural landscape.