Having kissed her share of frogs and left a single mother, romantic Claire (Maria Bello, PRISONERS) has raised her daughter Lucy (Ksenia Solo, BLACK SWAN) shielded from reality in the safety of her childhood home where pets do not die, they leave letters or postcards when they depart for further adventures, and all movies have happy endings thanks to Claire's hold on the remote control. In 1993, Lucy is twenty years old, has never had a boyfriend or a job, and has no plans for the future apart from continuing to live with her mother in their fantasy world. The only other person welcome in their world is Claire's more responsible and practical sister Kerri (Mary Lynn Rajskub, MYSTERIOUS SKIN). When Claire discovers that she has cancer and her time is limited, she realizes that she has indeed "created kind of a fucked up situation" and swears Kerri to secrecy although Lucy senses that something is wrong. When Lucy attempt to find a job in the city, her naivete almost lands her on the casting couch of a pornographic production company. Her transportation stolen off the street, Lucy takes shelter at a Federico Fellini film festival and is enthralled by LA STRADA. Returning home with VHS tapes of all of Fellini's films - including bootlegs of titles hard to see in the nineties like FELLINI'S CASANOVA - she becomes obsessed with the filmmaker's depiction of humanity and attempts to contact him. As Claire gets sicker, she would rather hurt Lucy in shoving her out of the nest than devastate her with the truth, but she and Kerri are unprepared for Lucy to take off to Italy to meet Fellini in the flesh after making an appointment with Fellini's personal assistant to see him in Rome. Missing her flight to Rome, Lucy ends up in Verona and is told to "eat, drink, and fall in love" while waiting for Fellini's availability. Falling in with model Sylvia (LEVERAGE's Beth Riesgraf) and her actor husband Robert (David O'Donnell, THIRTEEN DAYS) at an orgiastic party given by lecherous commercial director Guido (Davide Devenuto, AMORESTREMO), she just escapse with her innocence intact into the arms of young artist Pietro (Enrico Oetiker) with whom she falls in love cinema-style just before she is called to Rome for an appointment with the maestro. Back home, Claire and Kerri rehash their childhood and confront how Claire has left her daughter unprepared for real life while also trying to understand what Lucy sees in Fellini's films as Claire's health continues to decline. Once again detoured from Rome and winding up in Venice, Lucy make the mistake of trusting handsome Placido (Paolo Bernardini) who tries to seduce her at a masquerade party as much out of CASANOVA as EYES WIDE SHUT. Although Lucy does not escape unscathed and has bad news awaiting her at home, it seems as Fellini, his films, and by extension Giulietta Masina (JULIET OF THE SPIRITS may have provided Lucy with some guidance in her search for purpose and happiness. Loosely inspired by a true story from the life of actress Nancy Cartwright before her fame on THE SIMPSONS as the voice of Bart Simpson, IN SEARCH OF FELLINI is a visually striking and occasionally affecting coming-of-age story with plentiful homages to Fellini's masterworks as people Lucy encounters take the form of characters from the films (although perhaps director Taron Lexton cuts away too often to film clips to hammer the references home). The intercutting between Lucy's progress and her mother's decline suggest that one may be imagining the other, but the distinction is ultimately loss in ambiguous morass of flashy editing and slow motion (and what we discover of the story behind the film's real life events renders the emotional core of the story meaningless). Slickly-lensed but seemingly compromised by being aimed at both cineastes and the target audience of any number of films where women go to Italy to find love.