Flowers above hell: Elena Sofia Ricci has never been so dark

We agree that by now television has dozens and dozens of strong and charismatic women as protagonists – which, after years of Commissari Montalbani, is already a good revolution -, but Flowers above hell he went further, representing with truth and, at times, cruelty the story of a woman who struggles both with the men who would like to surround her and put her in a corner and with a disease that threatens to suck her essence away forever. Her name is Teresa Battaglia, is a sixty-year-old inspector who goes around with a braid and very heavy padded coats and has the face of Elena Sofia Riccian actress of rare talent who now makes you laugh in the role of Sister Angela and now immerses you in the personal drama of a woman who risks losing herself. Flowers above hell, the new Rai1 fiction produced by Publispei and based on the novel of the same name by Ilaria Tuti published by Longanesi, in fact starts from her, from this tough and badass woman called from Udine to investigate a mysterious murder committed in Travenìa small village in the Friulian Dolomites, one of those communities where secrets are hidden under the veil of appearances and where parents vent the frustrations of a harsh and unjust life on their children.

One morning like many others, a man is found dead in the snow, without clothes, with his eyes gouged out and several cuts on his legs and arms. To investigate the murder comes, precisely, Teresa, a professional profiler, a rough and worldly woman who he knows he can survive in a world of men only on condition that he never lets his guard down. Her intuition, her ability to interface contemptuously with colleagues and to be understanding and loving with children and the most fragile make her a point of reference for all those around her, even if it didn’t take Teresa long to understand that something is not as it should be. Memory lapses catch her more and more off guard making her feel suddenly lost and disoriented, inevitably compromising his ability to make connections and to dig into his knowledge to find the solution to the case he is investigating. The problem is that Teresa doesn’t talk to anyone about these imbalances: she minimizes them, she thinks they are the result of tiredness and diabetes from which he suffers and tries to ignore it, focusing on solving a case that risks being the biggest and most difficult of his career, given that children are also involved in it.

Yes in Flowers above hell they too are the protagonists: four children who, for different reasons, struggle with dysfunctional families who see them more as a problem than as a resource, founding a group, the Club degli Sfigati – a classic derivation of Stephenking’s memory between It And Stand by me — which only seems to be taken seriously by Battaglia and his team. Among silent woods, popular rituals and obscure masked presences that wander around at night in search of bowls of milk from which to drink, the fiction surprises both for the solidity of the plot and for the skill of the interpreters who, in addition to Ricci, also shine thanks to the very good Joseph Spataperfect in the role of the young inspector Massimo Marini whom Teresa Battaglia takes aim at by re-proposing interludes that not too distantly recall those of the Devil wears Prada. The result is the intimate and sincere portrait of a woman who knows she can’t afford to give in or, worse, to fail and the packaging of a thriller that the pen of Donatella Diamanti, Valerio D’Annunzio and Mario Cristiani they made it as compelling, dark and functional as few things passed on public TV recently.

More stories from Vanity Fair that may interest you

Elena Sofia Ricci: «The art of pleasing me»

The 60 years of Elena Sofia Ricci, the girl who never stands still

Why fiction Live and let live it helps us restart

To receive the other cover of Vanity Fair (and much more), subscribe to Vanity Weekend.

\