CINEMA

Crialese badly wanted her for the role, and sent his producer to meet her: "He just said: 'Here's a script. It's not much money.” Despite this unpromising start, Respiro has given Golino the role of her career. It opened last year in Italy and did substantial business; but then in January it also became a surprising top 10 hit in France.

Now re-released in Italy, it has featured on the box-office charts for almost a year. What gave Golino the hunch this little film could have such an impact? "It was a wonderful story about this woman," she says simply.  "I really liked the relationship between Grazia and her three kids.  It's volatile, sensual, with a lot of touching, which I find completely natural in a mother-son relationship - even though I don't have kids myself." Valeria was born in Naples; her father is a scholar, her Greek mother a painter, and her uncle Enzo a celebrated Italian journalist. When her bohemian parents split, she grew up in both Rome and Athens, and was a glamour model by age 16 - albeit one who had already read Proust. Currently single, she does not discuss her private life. Intriguingly, Respiro is set in what could be termed the recent present. It looks faintly contemporary, though there's not a mobile phone, video game or wide-screen TV in sight. Yet it could also be set back in the 1950s, the heyday of Italian cinema neo-realism; Golino, in a cheap cotton print frock, playing fierce and assertive as well as playful and sensual, recalls such Italian screen icons as Anna Magnani, Silvana Mangano and the young Loren. She might be a heroine in an old classic by de Sica or Rossellini. It's no accident, she insists, that she looks this way on screen. "I feel Respiro is hyper-realistic," she muses. "Superficially it looks like a neo-realist film. Pasolini and de Sica are Emmanuele's masters. Italian cinema has gone through a bad period.  "Everyone's been afraid for a long time. Our young directors have lacked confidence. Our cinema was so strong in the 1950s, they were like sons who suffered from dominating father figures. Now it's finally time to revisit that era to make it even more vivid. "There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy. At the moment, it's uninspiring." She finds the Berlusconi era materialistic and dull: "It's such an unpoetic time. We aren't even having difficulties. It's a wealthy, middle-class era. When I think of Italy now, I think of accessories, possessions, bad TV, fake boobs, BMWs." Ironically, Golino's big break has come now she has left Hollywood, after commuting between there and Rome for 12 years: "I had a house high up on Mulholland Drive.