"The liaison between an adolescent and an older woman is more than a constant theme of Zurlini's: it is profoundly revealing of the romantic sufferings of people incapable of imagining the perversity of others, and condemned to suffer it."-Marcel Oms, Rimini et le cinéma.Claudia Cardinale with this film etched her wistful, playful character whose edge comes from the reality that she never knows where her next meal is coming from. Aida, a showgirl, is seduced away from her act by a playboy aristocrat, Marcello, and then quickly abandoned. She pathetically tries to locate Marcello in his Parma villa, only to become the object of fascination and finally love for his 16-year-old brother Lorenzo (Jacques Perrin, marvelous in his first key role for Zurlini). Taking Aida under his wing, Lorenzo sees her poverty as a wealth, her mysterious needs as a gate out of his motherless life in the mansion he is destined to inherit. A moving, honest study of adolescence and class, Girl with a Suitcase is shot against the classic beauty of Parma contrasted with the visually spontaneous and socially chaotic sands of Rimini. As in his masterpiece Family Diary, Zurlini uses the precise elegance of settings and camera set-ups to explore the architecture of human relationships. Look for the characters in the spaces between the actors. (JB)