Angelica Iacovelli is the star of the movie ‘The Nutcracker’ with her characterisation as a Nutcracker Bride. She is described by Marcello Mastroianni as the perfect representative of a Nutcracker Bride, and it is clear from the way in which she is depicted by the film that Angelica has achieved the status of being the ideal Nutcracker Bride for many women throughout the world. She is a beautiful young woman, and at the age of 16 anni di sopra est, she already shows great promise for the future.
At the beginning of the film, she is working in the flower shop with her mother and younger sister. Later on in life she becomes a member of the chorus in a play, ‘The Nutcracker’, and later on in her career she moves to Milan, Italy to study ballet. This career change takes her into a totally new and different world, where she embraces roles that suit both her physical attributes and her nationality, but it is in this part of her life that she discovers another side of herself that surprises even herself. She falls in love with an Italian general who is twice her size, and at the end of the film they are married. After the wedding, however, he vanishes, leaving Angelica to find work in the theatre in order to pay the bills.
Throughout the following years she continues to work hard, taking acting and dance classes to help develop her skills as a performer. It is in this period that she meets and falls in love with a much older man who is described as ‘a true Italian gentleman’. It is suggested throughout the film that the relationship between the two may have been influenced by her stage work, and she may even have considered starting a family later in life. Throughout the late thirties and forties, Angelica continues to work hard in order to support her family, and as a result, she finds herself getting older while simultaneously building confidence in her ability to take care of herself. In a subtle way, this character is a representative of the many nationalities that have made their own mark on history, and the way in which each nationality can be defined by the actions of a woman.