Follow Your Heart (1996 film)

Follow Your Heart (Italian: Va' dove ti porta il cuore) is a 1996 Italian romantic drama film written and directed by Cristina Comencini. It is based on the novel with the same name by Susanna Tamaro.^[2][3]

Follow Your Heart
Italian	Va' dove ti porta il cuore
Directed by	Cristina Comencini
Written by	Roberta Mazzoni Cristina Comencini
Based on	Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro
Starring	Virna Lisi Margherita Buy Galatea Ranzi Valentina Chico Massimo Ghini Tchéky Karyo
Cinematography	Roberto Forza
Edited by	Nino Baragli
Music by	Claudio Capponi Alessio Vlad
Distributed by	Filmauro
Release date	1996 (1996)
Language	Italian
Box office	7.1 billion lira (Italy)[1]

For her performance Virna Lisi won a Globo d'oro and a Nastro d'Argento for best actress.^[4]

Plot

The film follows the unhappy lives of three generations of women – Olga, her late daughter Ilaria and her granddaughter Marta – as recounted by Olga in a letter she is writing to Marta before dying. Written in the form of a diary, the letter is an attempt to expiate the family trauma in order to free Marta from the misery she appears destined to.

Olga starts by recalling her childhood and her first clashes with her middle-class parents as a teenager. She has an affair with a married man, whose identity she does not disclose, falling pregnant with Ilaria shortly before his death. Her daughter also grows up as a turbulent young woman, developing a conflictual relationship with her mother which further deteriorates as she returns from a trip to Turkey pregnant with Marta. During a fight, Olga reveals to Ilaria the identity of her father, upsetting her to the point that, as she drives away, she crashes her car into a tree and is killed.

Through the love she expresses in the letter, Olga manages to relieve Marta's burdensome familial legacy, allowing her to "go where her heart takes her".^[5]

Cast

• Virna Lisi as Olga
• Margherita Buy as young Olga
• Sara Sanvincenti as child Olga
• Galatea Ranzi as Ilaria
• Massimo Ghini as Augusto
• Tchéky Karyo as Ernesto
• Valentina Chico [it] as Marta
• Lavinia Guglielman [it] as child Marta
• Luigi Diberti as Olga's father
• Anna Teresa Rossini [it] as Olga's mother
• Valeria Sabel as Elsa Razman
• Maria Grazia Bon [it] as Marta's nanny
• Stefania Graziosi
• Francesca Bortolotti
• Stefano Galante
• Gianfranco Saletta