Another exhausting day saw me crawl back to my flat and flop on the bed with just enough energy to turn on the tv. A little mindless entertainment was all I wanted. But it was not to be...
I happened to switch to a fascinating movie about the life of a young woman. And all of a sudden my brain cells shook off the exhaustion and sprang to attention.
Gia isn’t an award winning movie or the most brilliantly made film. It doesn’t have Oscar winning performances or fabulous special effects. But it has something equally potent. It has heart.
Too Beautiful To Die. Too Wild To Live. That’s the tagline that describes the life of Gia Marie Carangi, one of the top fashion models of the 1970’s. And that tag is apt.
Gia had a hard life. A rebel from the very start, Gia took some hard knocks in life till she stumbled upon a career that catapulted her to fame overnight. Success as a top model brought with it drugs, alcohol, bad company and promiscuity. All of which Gia fell prey to.
She had too little love in her life to pull herself away from the influences that eventually destroyed her. She finally died, age 26, a victim of the then little known about disease AIDS.
The film helps the viewer live the unfortunate life of Gia Carangi with her. It’s emotional and involving. Angelina Jolie portrays Gia as if she were born to play the part. While the film is mainly hers as the key character it’s worth mentioning Mercedes Ruehl as Gia’s mother, Faye Dunaway as Gia’s mentor and agent and Elizabeth Mitchell, the only person who showed Gia what love really was.
The film doesn’t have a very happy ending but it shows that the human spirit prevails over some very tough things… and sometimes it succumbs.
Gia is a wonderful human interest story that’s well worth the watch.