NEWS: The Lolita of the New Millennium

The "Lolita of the new millennium," as Melissa was described in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, was publicly reviled as a negative role model for today's teens. Last week, the psychologist and Corriere columnist Francesco Alberoni cited the "triumphant success" of the book and the film to explain how contemporary sex education promoted sex "without emotions and without love."

Film critics booed, and conservative lawmakers howled when the film's producer, the actress Francesca Neri, got airtime to promote the film during a Sunday talk show popular with families.

Then the original Melissa P., Melissa Panarello, who recently turned 20, dismissed the film as superficial and clichéd. "I'm trying to forget that I'm the author of the book that inspired it," she wrote in an open letter published by Italian news agencies. "It's opinionated and full of prejudices that inevitably deteriorate into pop psychology." Devotees of the novel, which recently sparked new debates after the National Central Library in Florence nominated it for the 2006 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, rushed to Ms. Panarello's defense. Her blog (www.melissap.org) was inundated with messages disdainfully rejecting any link between the best-selling book and the movie.

"Why don't you sue them?" Marzia asks in one message, citing various inconsistencies. "In the book you do the whipping. I remember you wore high heels. Awesome."

Meanwhile, "Melissa P." became one of the country's top-grossing films

NinjaTech said:
Her blog is in Italian so I really wasn't able to pick up much more than the fact that she probably likes dragon flies.

themilkman said:
Becky wondered why
She'd never noticed dragonflies
Her drag and click had never yielded
Anything as perfect as a dragonfly