Carolina Cavalli’s “The Kidnapping of Arabella” opens with one of the single most surprising things I’ve seen and/or heard in a movie this year: Chris Pine, swagged out in a skin-tight suit that makes him look like a yassified Nick Cave, seething with jealousy over Jonathan Franzen in seemingly perfect Italian.As I understand it, the Los Angeles-born actor began studying the language because he wanted to be cast in an Italian film, as opposed to being cast in an Italian film that required him to study the language. Mission accomplished!Better yet, the unexpected nature of Pine’s casting performs a crucial service for the eccentric and playfully contrived road trip misadventure in which he’s been cast: Once you accept that the guy from “Dungeons & Dragons” could successfully moonlight as the next breakout star of commedie all’italiana, even the most far-fetched aspects of Cavalli’s film demand to be taken at face value. That buy-in proves essential to a movie whose premise requires you to suspend every iota of your disbelief, lest its Lanthimos-lite approach to child abduction curdle into something much darker.~this review continues on IndieWire~
