Vanessa Kirby's Worst Movie On IMDb Is A Must-Watch For True Fans

British actress Vanessa Kirby first caught the public's attention playing Princess Margaret on the Netflix series "The Crown," praised by us on /Film for her "deliciously droll, sometimes even downright wicked performance." She then went toe-to-toe with Tom Cruise in the "Mission Impossible" series, had a passionate affair in the sapphic Western "World to Come," and received an Academy Award nomination for her lacerating performance as a grieving mother in the underappreciated Netflix drama "Pieces of a Woman."

Kirby has a husky voice and a cutting presence, and her roles often have a dynamic tension between vulnerability and strength. The complex emotional interiority she brings to her characters is drawn from her theatre background, where she played some of the great female roles written by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Tennessee Williams.

If you have enjoyed her past performances or have just come across her as Sue Storm in the new, beamingly optimistic "Fantastic Four: First Steps," it is even worth venturing into her worst movie on IMDb, with a 4.7 rating, "Italian Studies," directed by Adam Leon. "Italian Studies" may be a confounding viewing experience, but there are elements of her performance and the film's impressionistic style that will draw you in.

"A writer loses her memory. Adrift in NYC, she connects with a group of teenagers — in conversations both real and imagined — and searches for a way home" is an accurate plot description on IMDb that conveys how vague "Italian Studies" is. Director Adam Leon aligns the elliptical formal qualities of his film with Alina's adrift state of mind, though many viewers may lack the patience for a film that survives on avant-garde vibes alone.

One of the few strengths of "Italian Studies" is how it captures the loneliness of urban living despite being surrounded by tons of people. There's a quiet chaos in the handheld camera and distanced shots of Alina dazedly swimming through a sea of people that threatens to swallow her whole, unsure of where she is going, and no one cares enough to help. The sequences of Alina begging a bodega owner for water and falling asleep in the middle of a stairwell depict the gritty side of the city that was better showcased in films such as "Topside" or "Heaven Knows What."

It's difficult to connect with the main character, Alina, because she is a wandering amnesiac; she doesn't know who she is, and neither does the audience. But Vanessa Kirby's talent keeps us anchored to Alina's conflict. Every disoriented gesture and vacant stare carries an undercurrent of active, forward-moving desperation to decipher the truth. Aside from the magnetic Vanessa Kirby, you can also catch glimpses of "Stranger Things" star Maya Hawke and Fred Hechinger, one-half of the twin emperors from "Gladiator II," as some of the teens. Without Vanessa Kirby to give some emotional gravity to her character as she stumbles through a haze for the entire running time, "Italian Studies" would have been a completely failed experiment.