Amanda 2023

In the early 2000s, Amanda is a directionless 25-year-old Italian woman who feels detached from her wealthy family—especially her mother and older sister—and she struggles to form real social connections after finishing school in Paris. Rather than stepping into her family’s pharmacy business, she drifts through the city, spending long hours at the local cinematheque, crashing at raves in search of friends, and attempting to forge online connections through video chats while supported by a hotel funded by her parents. She also visits an aging horse tied up at a nearby farm, a small, quiet symbol of her unsettled mood and the gaps she’s trying to fill.

At her mother’s suggestion, Rebecca, Viola’s daughter and Amanda’s childhood friend who has grown distant, re-enters Amanda’s life. Rebecca is a former athlete who now leads a reclusive existence, rarely leaving her room and routinely attending psychotherapy sessions at home. After a tense, wordless moment when Rebecca slams her bedroom door in Amanda’s face, Amanda learns from Viola that the two of them were inseparable as toddlers before Amanda’s family moved away. Convinced they could have been best friends all along, Amanda becomes determined to rekindle their bond.

As the two women relearn each other, at a rave Dude — the boy Amanda meets there — explains that his presence at the venue is simply about distributing free condoms, not dealing drugs. They grow closer, and he invites Amanda to his upcoming birthday party, telling her she can bring someone. She brings Rebecca, and the two grow more entangled, with Amanda even moving in temporarily to Rebecca’s home. But the arrangement becomes complicated when Amanda grows envious of Rebecca’s therapist, Ann, who also sees the two of them exploring their boundaries and dependence.

The situation fractures when the boy from the rave tells Amanda to stop texting him because he’s dating another girl, leaving her heartbroken. She soon discovers that Rebecca was behind the rendezvous and the subsequent heartbreak. In a moment of despair, Amanda steals the horse and returns to Rebecca’s house, leaving the animal wandering the garden. She goes to Rebecca’s room and tries to persuade her to run away with her, but Rebecca—seeing through Amanda’s desperation—sides with Ann’s assessment and reveals that Viola had forced Rebecca to befriend Amanda as a child because people felt sorry for her. Devastated, Amanda leaves the room and, for a while, steps away from that intense dynamic.

Back at her family’s villa, Amanda’s relationship with her mother and sister gradually improves. Viola later approaches Amanda with a request to reunite with Rebecca. Amanda tells Viola that Rebecca can be found at the local cinematheque, but Rebecca never arrives. The lingering tension surfaces again when the rave party incident resurfaces, and the boy accuses Amanda of crashing his party and setting off firecrackers in his living room—an accusation she denies. Realizing that Rebecca might be behind it, Amanda goes to Rebecca’s house to thank her, and Rebecca confesses that she rode to the party on horseback, but the firecrackers frightened the horse away. The two set out to find the horse together, signaling a tentative reconciliation and the possibility of rebuilding a damaged friendship.