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Parents' Guide to

18 Presents

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Italian tearjerker has some language, mature themes.

Movie NR 2020 115 minutes
18 Presents Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

18 PRESENTS is the highly emotional story of a young girl named Anna (Benedetta Porcaroli) whose mother, Elisa (Vittoria Puccini), died giving birth to her. Anna's anger mounts as, year after year, friends and relatives gather to give her the gifts that her mother, diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy, had planned, all the way to her 18th birthday. The celebrations are always tinged with mourning for her young mother's death, making Anna feel guilty, rebellious, and ungrateful. She runs away on her 18th birthday, and things take an unexpected turn from there.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This film achieves a difficult goal, creating a plausible alternate reality that fosters empathy in a self pitying teen. Meeting your own dead mother can do that. The dream that intercuts through the film is so real and believable that it ultimately affects the dead mother, too. Fantasy and real-life are skillfully intertwined, as Elisa is the driver who hits Anna, and that accident triggers the dream that brings the exasperating, drunken teen into the life of a pregnant cancer patient. Plus, Elisa has just received the diagnosis, so she has a lot on her mind, yet miserable as she is, she's still kind enough to bring the injured girl to her home for first aid.

To 18 Presents' credit, Elisa is no saintly maternal figure -- she's irritable, short-tempered, and distracted, and Anna's lying and evasiveness annoy the older woman. In the early minutes of the dream sequence, the audience can't help but wonder where this overlap of past and present can possibly lead, but the stories are neatly dovetailed as the story ends.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about why a girl who knows her mother died after giving birth to her would carry guilt through her entire life and balk at celebrating her birthday year after year. What do you think Anna's dream shows her about her mother?

  • How does the fantasy element of 18 Presents influence its believability? Can emotions be true even if events aren't?

  • What do you think about movies that intermix dead and living people?

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