A Girl in Australia

A Girl in Australia is a 1971 Italian comedy film directed by Luigi Zampa, with stars Alberto Sordi and Claudia Cardinale. Plot At the end of World War II, the promise of jobs and a chance to start a new life induced tens of thousands of young Italians to join the post-war immigration to Australia. In 1971, having lived about twenty-five years Down Under, one of those immigrants, middle-aged Amedeo Battipaglia, a lineman in the remote New South Wales settlement bearing the (fictional) name of Bun Bun Ga, several kilometers from the outback city of Broken Hill, is about to meet Carmela, his prospective bride from Rome, with whom he has been corresponding. Each of them misrepresented facts to the other — Carmela, a very attractive Calabrian woman in her early thirties, is a semiliterate prostitute seeking an opportunity to get away from her abusive pimp, with the letters to Amedeo ghostwritten by her friend Rosalba, while Amedeo, feeling inadequate about his ordinary appearance, sent Carmela a photograph, taken about ten years earlier, of himself between two Italian immigrant friends, Giuseppe Bartoni and Bampo. The arrow in the photo, however, is over Giuseppe because, when Amedeo visited his tall, handsome friend for advice, Giuseppe erased the arrow over Amedeo's head and pencilled it over his own head. In Rome, getting a ride to the airport on the back of a friend's motorcycle, with her pimp in pursuit, Carmela arrives at the boarding gate, meets Rosalba who hands her the travel documents, has a final across-the-gate shouting match with her pimp, and takes a seat in Qantas first class next to a turbaned passenger perusing Life (issue of 19 February 1971). A stewardess points out that her ticket is for tourist class with special discount for immigrants. Meanwhile, Amedeo drives his substandard auto nearly 1600 kilometers to Brisbane Airport, where Carmela's flight, filled with other Italian mail-order brides (as well as those from neighboring Yugoslavia) will land. Sitting at the airport lounge with numerous Italian men awaiting their future wives, they pass around outdated photographs that the women had sent to their prospective mates and speculate whether their appearances had changed. Still uncertain of recognizing Carmela from the black-and-white photo of her as a young peasant girl, he examines and questions a few of the newly arrived women and then is hit with realization as she slowly comes into view on the down escalator.