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What if your life had played out differently? What if you could change it with the wisdom you possess today? This thought crosses everyone’s mind at least once, but in the Italian film The Kidnapping of Arabella, it plays incessantly in the mind of troubled 28-year-old Holly.
Then, one day, Holly (Benedetta Porcaroli) discovers her chance in the form of 7-year-old Arabella (Lucrezia Guglielmino), who approaches her while she’s eating alone in a Taco King parking lot. The precocious child convinces Holly that she’s a younger version of herself, when, in reality, she’s running away from her self-absorbed author father (Chris Pine, shockingly speaking fluent Italian). Holly, a misguided physics student desperate to believe in such a time warp, falls for Arabella’s act, convinced she’s been given a pathway to course-correct her life. And that’s how Arabella comes to be kidnapped.
“Holly is kidnapped by her conviction, and by her idea that she can go back,” the film’s writer and director, Carolina Cavalli, tells me on a video call from Paris. “The desire of going back was the desire of having a second chance and starting from where everything could have happened differently.”
Cavalli’s sophomore film, The Kidnapping of Arabella debuted to critical acclaim at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, cementing the 36-year-old as an international director to watch and earning the film a limited release stateside. The wistful road drama centers on the magnetic chemistry and quirky, tumultuous relationship between Holly and Arabella: a listless, socially isolated woman and a clever child who desperately wants to be heard. They clash because Holly hopes to be propelled back in time, while Arabella wants to push forward; yet, they offer each other sanctuary from the barbed world they inhabit. They are connected, perhaps not by time travel, but by a shared conviction to find a better way to live.
On the surface, Cavalli crafts a whimsical film packed with pranks and jokes, as if Federico Fellini directed Thelma & Louise, yet it pulses with a much darker undercurrent. Holly clearly wrestles with undiagnosed mental illness, though she suffers most from profound isolation amplified by an internalized sense of unfulfilled potential and lack of familial love. Porcaroli, who won Best Actress at VIFF for her role in the film, offers a tenderly nuanced portrayal of the reclusive protagonist, a 28-year-old woman who is both battered by the world and wonderfully naive.
To make this road drama compelling, Cavalli knew she needed to find the right Arabella to be Holly’s bright-eyed counterpoint. “I really felt [Guglielmino] was ready for an adventure in life; and as a character, she was very curious and very tender,” she says of the 8-year-old actress, calling out her “naive strength and conviction.” Guglielmino expertly channels Arabella’s meddlesome yet charismatic demeanor, driving the stars’ sisterly dynamic with a performance that feels truly playful. As a young filmmaker, Cavalli admits she struggled with letting go of control at times, but having a child on set taught her, “you cannot control everything, and you shouldn’t control everything.”
As for Holly, Cavalli easily landed on Porcaroli, who also portrayed the titular character in the director’s 2022 feature debut, an absurd coming-of-age film titled Amanda. There, she plays a socially awkward young woman with plenty of money—and inner demons—as she tries to connect with an old friend. The role surely prepared Porcaroli for her turn as Holly, a similarly wide-eyed protagonist whose hopeless quest is simply trying to be understood. Both Amanda and Holly are flawed, to put it lightly, yet Cavalli and Porcaroli ensure the characters are presented empathetically. “We share a certain way of bringing characters alive,” she says.
What makes The Kidnapping of Arabella effective is Cavalli’s ability to craft a devastating revelation about a character among the silliness unfolding in her adventures. At one point in the film, Holly and Arabella concoct a plan to make some money by peddling Arabella as a flower girl outside a chapel. One couple eventually welcomes them into their wedding celebration and their home. You can see the emotional shift on Holly’s face, who feels coddled by family and warmth for, perhaps, the first time. She stands on her chair to announce her joy. “She’s so happy to be invited and included that she says that that’s the best night of her life—and she loves everyone there,” Cavalli says. “And then soon, this feeling of being part of a festive, happy environment is destroyed for her [when Arabella steals a golden egg from their bathroom]. I really find it funny and tender and a little bit sad for me.” The scene encapsulates the rhythm of The Kidnapping of Arabella, oscillating between absurd, fleeting bliss and the harsh reality of being alive.
The lasting power of Cavalli’s coming-of-age movie is built into her characters, which she crafts with sensitivity, shortcomings and all. Despite so vividly depicting the unfairness of life, she continually finds the humanity within it. “I love when there is a very cold and grey and lonely world, but still [the characters] manage to emerge with an act of tenderness, as if they were not even realizing how cruel the world around them is,” Cavalli says.
