How 'Mafia Mamma' puts a 'bizarro feminist twist' on 'The Godfather'

Catherine Hardwicke says she always wants to “elevate” the films she’s directing.

“When I did Twilight, I really wanted to feel the romance. I wanted to feel that crush, that first love and the ecstatic feeling,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment in a new interview. “In Thirteen, I wanted you to feel how the hormones are raging and what it feels like to be a kid, when everything matters.”

So directing the high-concept comedy Mafia Mamma — in which a timid American woman (Toni Collette) with a thankless marketing job, cheating husband and son who’s just left for college becomes the head of the Cosa Nostra in Italy after her “vintner” grandfather is gunned down — was not a stretch.

It might just be her own take on The Godfather.

“Well, I love The Godfather, and I love what Francis Ford Coppola did, so I never thought I would do a movie like that,” Hardwicke says. “But a bizarro feminist twist on The Godfather? Hell yeah.”

If Mafia Mamma is Hardwicke’s bizarro feminist Godfather, then Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, Hereditary) is its Michael Corleone. (Though a running joke in the movie is that Collette’s Kristin has never even seen Coppola’s 1972 classic or its equally beloved sequel.)

Collette never thought she’d be The Godmother, “But I’m really happy that I am!,” she professes. “I had the time of my life making this movie. Making this movie was just absolutely blissful. Honestly, I think not only is it a career highlight in terms of the experience, but it's a life highlight for me. I really just loved my time in Italy… It was just honestly the most fun I've had at work.”

Guiding Kristin as she takes over the family business is another powerful woman, the firm’s consigliere Bianca, played by Monica Bellucci. The Italian actress (Malena, The Matrix sequels) was especially drawn to the film’s gender twist.

“We’re in a male-dominated society, and these women, they have to fight to protect themselves,” she says. “And behind the comedy, there is incredible meaning.”

Indeed, while the film is filled with fish-out-of-water laughs and hijinks, its not hard to gauge its central metaphor: an insecure woman finally finding empowerment in a patriarchal world after literally being empowered to run the mafia.

“That’s a huge reason for wanting to do it,” says Collette. “Firstly, it made me laugh out loud. It is properly wet-your-pants funny, like it's a proper comedy. But I do love the meaning behind it and I love that it's not dogmatic, but it's about this woman who's downtrodden, treated like crap, has really very little self-esteem. And then she’s thrust into this world that she has no understanding of and is completely overwhelmed half the time. And I think that dynamic is pretty much where most of the comedy comes from.

“But I think it's really important to see this woman, her trajectory is one of coming into a sense of self and a sense of autonomy and really finding some kind of power and strength within. It's what we need. It's what women need to see on screen.”

Watch the trailer:

Mafia Mamma is now playing.