Shouts to Chris Pine for studying Italian to take on a supporting role in Carolina Cavalli’s uneven but narratively kookier follow-up to 2022’s Amanda. Pine isn’t front-and-center all that often, but his presence – both on-screen and as an A-lister showing up in a foreign-language sophomore indie – is something that lingers even when he’s nowhere to be found. He’s almost a ghostly stand-in for the parental negligence that allows the entire story to kickstart in the first place. Pine plays an acclaimed writer and terrible father who drags his young daughter Arabella from one high-end dinner and keynote speech to the next, seemingly less out of genuine affection than as a way of rounding out some of the rougher, pompous edges of his public persona. How arrogant can a man seem if he also appears to want to spend so much time with his daughter despite being a public figure? Apparently, pretty damn arrogant, especially when he sends her off mid-dinner with their chauffeur to one of her favorite fast-food spots, Taco King, not because he’s looking out for her, but because he wants just one moment of peace and silence.
From that point, roughly fifteen minutes into the movie, Pine is mostly relegated to brief cutaways as the film shifts its attention to Arabella and Holly, played by Benedetta Porcaroli, returning from her starring role in Cavalli’s debut. Porcaroli once again reminds me of Kristen Stewart in the best possible way: dry, melancholic, underspoken, and somehow able to communicate an entire emotional state without appearing particularly interested in explaining herself. We meet Holly at a genuine crisis point in her life, working a dead-end job while feeling as though the space-time continuum itself is conspiring against her. Then Arabella approaches her in the Taco King parking lot and convinces her that she’s actually a younger version of Holly, sent back by the universe with some kind of cosmic purpose. Naturally, Holly should take her on a road trip. What the public sees, of course, is a kidnapping, and the two go on the lamb in a sweet and unpredictable riff on something like A Perfect World, except Holly isn’t an escaped convict being pursued across the country; she’s essentially being conned by an eight-year-old who just really, really can’t stand her dad.
The real heartbeat of the movie is the performances, which shine through Cavalli’s extremely dry and wry comedic tone. Porcaroli is becoming such an interesting screen presence for this kind of material, and she has the ability to carry a film almost entirely through her deadpan reactions and understated delivery. Pine, meanwhile, deserves credit for committing to something so far outside the box of what you’d expect from a typical Hollywood leading man. But the biggest discovery might be Lucrezia Guglielmino, making her first credited acting appearance as Arabella. She’s captivating as this smart-ass, self-sufficient eight-year-old who seems far more worldly than she should be, while simultaneously lacking the conventional childhood experience that comes from being raised by a father whose public profile has seemingly taken precedence over actually being a parent. There’s a really funny contradiction baked into the character: Arabella acts like she’s already figured everything out, but so much of that maturity has been forced upon her by circumstances she never asked for.
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Where The Kidnapping of Arabella loses me a little is in how shapeless it can feel. Amanda had a tighter sense of focus, whereas this movie is more content to simply wash over you with its dry comedic quips and oddball character interactions than to build toward a particularly compelling and narrow narrative. Cavalli’s first film reminded me of Aki Kaurismäki, but this one doubles down on that sensibility even further. At 107 minutes, it can overstay its welcome by just enough that I occasionally found myself wishing the film would move toward something more tangible emotionally. That said, Cavalli sticks the landing with a genuinely satisfying final moment: Holly, now facing charges for kidnapping, watches Arabella’s recorded testimony on a VHS tape play in the courtroom and becomes completely overwhelmed by what she’s hearing. It’s a simple moment, but it gives the entire oddball road trip a little more emotional weight by the end.
I’m left feeling like this is just ever so slightly a step down from Amanda, mostly because I don’t think the individual scenes on the run are going to stick with me in quite the same way as the best moments from Cavalli’s debut. But there’s still something really pleasant about the way Cavalli makes these strange, melancholic people collide with one another, and the performances here are more than enough to carry the movie through its more shapeless stretches. I have season tickets for whatever Carolina Cavalli and Benedetta Porcaroli decide to do next.
Score: 6/10
The Kidnapping of Arabella (2026)
- Cast: Benedetta Porcaroli, Lucrezia Guglielmino, Chris Pine
- Director: Carolina Cavalli
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Runtime: 107 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: July 17, 2026
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