Two noted European screen actors have recently collaborated with their wives -- with results now on view in US theaters. Rebecca Miller directs Daniel Day-Lewis in 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose.' Sergio Castellitto debuts as director, starring with Penelope Cruz, in a movie made from his wife Margaret Mazzantini's novel, 'Non ti muovere' ('Don't Move'). While good communication and personal commitment are likely advantages of husband-and-wife collaborations, lack of objectivity could be a danger. But surely these should be performances worth watching? Yet for some reason, neither 'Don't Move' nor 'Jack and Rose' has met with wide approval from local critics. Let's consider why 'Don't Move' has failed to movie American viewers.
Castellitto and Day-Lewis aren't, of course, at all the same kind of actor. The Italian has seemed more of a journeyman, a consummate pro who always hits his marks. Because he can fit in seamlessly wherever needed, he has often been called on to play roles in non-Italian films. The Englishman is more extreme, a chameleon whose extraordinary ability to become absorbed in diverse characters may sometimes exhaust him, which together with his yen for long breaks to try out other occupations has led to years of absence from the screen.
Castellitto's 'Don't Move' is a glossy production about a doctor tormented by an adulterous relationship, and it gives the actor/director the great dramatic role he may have been pining for. He gets to rape and scream and smash things and weep and even, in an inexplicable fit of boredom, to pee on his wife's potted plants. A surgeon, he operates on his girlfriend and must resuscitate his own daughter. In her part as his secret mistress, Penelope Cruz gets a chance to have the great soulful tragic role she was born for, though she has to endure all sorts of cruel misuse along the way.
Too bad 'Don't Move' is a painfully confused melodrama with schlocky eroticism and woman's-picture weepiness (of a kind that's nonetheless demeaning to women) a movie that feels at times like Zalmon King's sleazy (though undeniably erotic) Red Shoe Diaries. Don't Move even pays King unintentional homage by actually featuring a sexy high-heeled red shoe as one of its major symbols.
A more subliminal kind of symbolism is involved in pitting Timofeo's (Castellitto's) blonde bourgeois wife Elsa (Claudia Gerini) against (ironically, since she's of course Spanish) his battered but intense Albanian girlfriend (Cruz). The mistress' name, in a not-so-subtle irony, is Italia (Italy). This makes the whole plot some kind of metaphor for Italy's perennial North-South identity crisis the kind of conflict of loyalty, interest, and obligation that led to Bossi's conservative Lega Nord (North League) movement, which aims to waive financial responsibility for the poverty of Italy's lower half. The film's implication is that Italy's foreign immigrants are in for even more brutal treatment.
'Don't Move' tells the story of Timofeo's torrid, abusive-but-addictive love affair with Italia in flashbacks while Angela, his teenage daughter, is in the operating room hovering near death from skull injuries after a motor scooter accident where her helmet wasn't fastened properly. This should be a warning for young Italians, who can ride their Vespas legally in crazy city traffic from the age of fourteen.
There's an elaborate connection between the two stories, since the affair began shortly before the daughter was conceived. But there's no real point in the flashbacks' running parallel to the operating room drama, other than an overriding need to maintain constant melodrama.
Not only is Timofeo a doctor: all the movie's big scenes refer back to the emergency room. And this makes you realize that whether or not Margaret Mazzantini's novel is a women's story, the movie is ultimately all about Timofeo. That the three women are all mere décor for a display of his ego ultimately becomes alienating.
Castellitto gets to run through every emotion, but despite all the theatrics Timofeo remains opaque as a character. Besides the hospital hysterics there are some heavy rainstorms, which also add to the sense of trumped-up theatricality.
'Don't Move' begins with scenes of anomie and pointless merrymaking among the well-to-do à la Antonioni and Fellini, runs the gamut of crudities those Italian greats weren't allowed or chose to eschew only to return to the status quo and to the mature face of Castellitto - which has more than a little of the sad soulfulness of Sergio's great cinematic predecessor, Marcello (Mastroianni, of course), Fellini's and Antonioni's alter ego. Not that the actor is Timofeo, but as a director Castellitto gets to be his own alter ego. For all its gloss, this first widely seen directing effort doesn't show whether he has it in him to make a truly memorable movie. If he's going to, he may need to get a screenplay from somebody other than himself and his wife.
For my comments on Day-Lewis and his wife's film, see the 'Ballad of Jack and Rose' site.
Castellitto and Day-Lewis aren't, of course, at all the same kind of actor. The Italian has seemed more of a journeyman, a consummate pro who always hits his marks. Because he can fit in seamlessly wherever needed, he has often been called on to play roles in non-Italian films. The Englishman is more extreme, a chameleon whose extraordinary ability to become absorbed in diverse characters may sometimes exhaust him, which together with his yen for long breaks to try out other occupations has led to years of absence from the screen.
Castellitto's 'Don't Move' is a glossy production about a doctor tormented by an adulterous relationship, and it gives the actor/director the great dramatic role he may have been pining for. He gets to rape and scream and smash things and weep and even, in an inexplicable fit of boredom, to pee on his wife's potted plants. A surgeon, he operates on his girlfriend and must resuscitate his own daughter. In her part as his secret mistress, Penelope Cruz gets a chance to have the great soulful tragic role she was born for, though she has to endure all sorts of cruel misuse along the way.
Too bad 'Don't Move' is a painfully confused melodrama with schlocky eroticism and woman's-picture weepiness (of a kind that's nonetheless demeaning to women) a movie that feels at times like Zalmon King's sleazy (though undeniably erotic) Red Shoe Diaries. Don't Move even pays King unintentional homage by actually featuring a sexy high-heeled red shoe as one of its major symbols.
A more subliminal kind of symbolism is involved in pitting Timofeo's (Castellitto's) blonde bourgeois wife Elsa (Claudia Gerini) against (ironically, since she's of course Spanish) his battered but intense Albanian girlfriend (Cruz). The mistress' name, in a not-so-subtle irony, is Italia (Italy). This makes the whole plot some kind of metaphor for Italy's perennial North-South identity crisis the kind of conflict of loyalty, interest, and obligation that led to Bossi's conservative Lega Nord (North League) movement, which aims to waive financial responsibility for the poverty of Italy's lower half. The film's implication is that Italy's foreign immigrants are in for even more brutal treatment.
'Don't Move' tells the story of Timofeo's torrid, abusive-but-addictive love affair with Italia in flashbacks while Angela, his teenage daughter, is in the operating room hovering near death from skull injuries after a motor scooter accident where her helmet wasn't fastened properly. This should be a warning for young Italians, who can ride their Vespas legally in crazy city traffic from the age of fourteen.
There's an elaborate connection between the two stories, since the affair began shortly before the daughter was conceived. But there's no real point in the flashbacks' running parallel to the operating room drama, other than an overriding need to maintain constant melodrama.
Not only is Timofeo a doctor: all the movie's big scenes refer back to the emergency room. And this makes you realize that whether or not Margaret Mazzantini's novel is a women's story, the movie is ultimately all about Timofeo. That the three women are all mere décor for a display of his ego ultimately becomes alienating.
Castellitto gets to run through every emotion, but despite all the theatrics Timofeo remains opaque as a character. Besides the hospital hysterics there are some heavy rainstorms, which also add to the sense of trumped-up theatricality.
'Don't Move' begins with scenes of anomie and pointless merrymaking among the well-to-do à la Antonioni and Fellini, runs the gamut of crudities those Italian greats weren't allowed or chose to eschew only to return to the status quo and to the mature face of Castellitto - which has more than a little of the sad soulfulness of Sergio's great cinematic predecessor, Marcello (Mastroianni, of course), Fellini's and Antonioni's alter ego. Not that the actor is Timofeo, but as a director Castellitto gets to be his own alter ego. For all its gloss, this first widely seen directing effort doesn't show whether he has it in him to make a truly memorable movie. If he's going to, he may need to get a screenplay from somebody other than himself and his wife.
For my comments on Day-Lewis and his wife's film, see the 'Ballad of Jack and Rose' site.