Love on the island A seventeen-year-old girl (Romy Schneider) lives on the Italian island of Ischia and earns a living working as a tourist guide. She does not know her parents or her real name, but calls herself Scampolo, which in Italian means “splinter” or “patch”. Like all girls her age, Scampolo dreams of love. One day she meets a poor but promising architect, Roberto Costa, who invites her on her first date. At first, the shy girl behaves constrained, since she had never dealt with men before, but heard many warnings from older friends. Roberto and Scampolo's relationship has gradually grown closer.
Costa manages to stay afloat only thanks to the support of his rich friend, photographer Andreas Michaelis. He hopes to win a prize at the upcoming architectural competition. Scampolo, who knows nothing about Andreas at first, lends Roberto some money so he can pay for the laundry. When it turns out that Costa's designs for the competition never arrived due to a postal accident, Scampolo personally takes them to the Housing Minister. She convinces him to put Roberto’s work up for competition and succeeds. There is nothing stopping young people from being together.
The film was shot in Italy against the backdrop of beautiful southern landscapes, and Romi is unusually good in her white blouse and red dress. The young actress is very sweet and believable portrays a young and inexperienced girl who falls in love with a man for the first time in her life. But the picture itself from the point of view of today is too naive and protracted, in fact no different from the numerous costumed melodramas in which Schneider was constantly filmed at that time. If the actress did not decide to change her life and go to France, she would most likely remain a star of the local scale. However, soon after the premiere of the film “Scampolo”, she went to the filming of the melodrama “Christina”, during which she met Alain Delon. But that's another story altogether.
6 out of 10