In cinema, few sayings ring as true as “you learn from the masters.” Valentina and Nicole Bertani have taken that to heart for their first feature film, Le bambine (international title: Mosquitoes), a stylized cocktail drawing from multiple sources: Lynchian suburban satire, Sean Baker–like portraits of life on the margins, and a pop aesthetic reminiscent of early Xavier Dolan. The result is a devastating portrayal of pleasure culture in 1990s Italy—hypnotic and unsettling in equal measure.

The story follows three girls during a sweltering summer in Ferrara: Linda (Mia Ferricelli), newly arrived with her mother Eva (Clara Tramontano), a twenty-something more interested in nightlife than in parenting; and sisters Marta (Petra Scheggia) and Azzurra (Agnese Scazza), daughters of a nurse-turned-dollmaker and a chain-smoking surgeon. Between melting ice cream cones and endless hours of boredom, the girls watch as the adults who should be their role models fail spectacularly to find either satisfaction or meaning.

In this world, adult amusement comes in the form of drugs, sex, or endless parties, while introspection is pushed aside. The logic of consumption—masked as modernity—only further alienates the characters from reality. In this environment, the minors become pieces in a game they don’t fully understand. This gives rise to scenes as absurd as they are disturbing: searching through dog excrement for a glass eye, or entering a nightclub with a mother who, moments later, advises them not to accept drinks from strangers. The film demands premature maturity from its young protagonists: from beauty worship to emotional self-control. It’s no surprise that one of them mentally escapes into a cosmic fairy tale, imagined in slow motion and reinforced by surprisingly polished visual effects for a debut feature. This symbolic escape marks one of the film’s high points, where the Bertanis seem to bury Italian neorealism only to dance on its grave to the beat of electronic basslines.

The chosen image format—a tight, almost oppressive frame—visualizes the social constraints in which the girls move. Yet at times the narrative breaks out of this visual box: in the black bars surrounding the action, stellar formations appear, hinting that a child’s imagination can extend far beyond caring for a Tamagotchi. Still, that glimmer of hope is fleeting. After the deaths of icons like Lady Di and Gianni Versace, the story slides toward disillusionment, with no way back.

Although Le bambine bursts with saturated colors, nostalgic nods, and a synth-driven soundtrack anchoring us firmly in 1997, its tone is far less optimistic than its palette suggests. In contrast to the rural lyricism of Alice Rohrwacher, the Bertanis choose to expose contemporary harshness and the collapse of pop-culture promises. The narrative rhythm, however, falls into a certain repetition: encounters that reveal adult hypocrisy and drive Linda further and further from her irresponsible mother. This insistence lessens the film’s dramatic complexity, though the cast—especially the young actresses—manages to hold it together.

The exaggerated tone, at times bordering on the grotesque, can be either fascinating or exhausting depending on the viewer’s patience. The adults are caricatures as seen through a child’s eyes, and within that logic, the character of the nanny Carlino (Milutin Dapčević) comes dangerously close to outdated stereotypes. Even so, there’s a clear authorial pulse: a constantly moving camera, unexpected framing, and a will to unsettle that refuses visual complacency.