vanillafan Reviews

Don't Move (2004)

A perfect, moving and soulful adaptation of the beautiful novel upon which it's based

[10/10 · 14 March 2004]

A couple of days ago I watched NON TI MUOVERE on its opening night.

Well, I think that it's a true masterpiece ... gripping, heartfelt, as kudos-deserving as the best-selling novel of the same title upon which it's based, written by Margaret Mazzantini (here she is the co-screenwriter and also appears in a glimpse-like wordless cameo, at the end of the movie), winner of the Strega - one of Italy's main literary prizes - in the year 2002.

The director and male lead Sergio Castellitto - who plays the cowardly ambiguous surgeon Timoteo - is as immense as always. He's also the other co-screenwriter of the movie. He's - above all - author Margaret Mazzantini's husband of many years. His was clearly a true labor of love.

Penélope Cruz is astounding, realistic and yet heartbreaking, enormously moving, totally disappearing into her character, who's a poor, destitute, cheaply dressed and unkempt woman named Italia. She cleans hotel rooms for a living and lives herself in a slum, but has got the purest and noblest of souls ("She's a toad in a miniskirt who teaches the Prince how to love", in actor-director Castellitto's own words).

Comedy actress Claudia Gerini - in her first highly dramatic role as the guy's betrayed wife - is very, very good herself.

Last but not least, the Castellitto-Cruz chemistry is amazingly powerful: much more so, say, than the Cruise-Cruz one in Vanilla Sky, enough said ...!

I cried my eyes out, even though I had read the novel more than once, therefore perfectly knowing the story!

HERE is a movie which I definitely want to watch multiple times.

As for myself, well, after two days I'm still re-living all the marvelous, emotionally intense moments which I enjoyed while watching this movie.

Really nothing in Penélope Cruz's resume will prepare you to what she does here, not even what I think was her best performance before this movie, i.e. Sister Rosa in Pedro Almodovar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER ... nothing indeed! Not to mention that she acts here in Italian language, and she commands it perfectly.

Just to get an idea of her greatness in this movie, here are actor-director Sergio Castellitto's words at the press conference for the movie, which took place in Rome on March 9th:

"Penélope is heartbreaking, she's as great as [Federico Fellini's wife] Giulietta Masina [in the movie La Strada], what she did for this movie is amazing: a lesson of humbleness, passion and courage. But beware! Her act of courage is NOT the fact that she became ugly, this is a silly thing which you use to read everywhere, but it's wrong; to become ugly for a movie, for an actress like her, who then comes back to her natural beauty, is actually a privilege. Her act of courage, instead, was how she succeeded in building her character's misery: she got on this horse and she did ride on it, without any radar equipment, with a total faith, asking just for one thing: 'I want to act with my own voice, at any cost'. And since I'm an actor myself, I just take a bow in front of a person who tells me: 'nobody will touch my own voice'. Anyway, did you hear her? Did you hear how good she is? She gave a true diction lesson to so many, many Italian actresses ".

And what about Sergio Castellitto himself? This extremely charming and intelligent man has been an acting God for more than twenty years here in Italy; he's an uncanny mix of subdued and brainy acting, total sincerity, powerful emotions in display, instant ability to deeply inhabit any character ... and despite his 50 years of age (he's 20 years older than Penélope), they are absolutely MORE than believable as a mismatched couple of lovers who're overwhelmed and bewildered by a passion which they can't explain, not even to themselves. Like I said above, they share a burning-hot chemistry, which is not only a sexual one but a sentimental one as well.

Moreover, I honestly think that I had never seen in ages such a faithful literary screen adaptation: the novel blends into the movie and vice versa. The one takes new life and new breath from the other.

The opening sequence in the rain, shot from a great height (I'd say that's the same technique of the opening scene in Vanilla Sky), is stunning ... and from there on, the movie flows easily, always vividly and painfully alive, with no lazy moment, at no slow pace, even though it mainly relies upon a subtle psychological analysis of the characters, with those glances, those conversations, those all-important small gestures, those confrontations, those deep feelings in display ...

I hope that this movie will be adequately distributed in the U.S. also. All those involved in it truly deserve to get a wide recognition for their excellent work.

I'm Not Scared (2003)

A moving, delicate and yet brutal gem

[10/10 · 13 August 2003]

For many reasons I had let this moving, delicate and yet brutal gem of a film just slip out of my crowded movie fan agenda earlier this year, when it opened here in Italy. Luckily I managed to catch it on the big screen at the eleventh hour, when I was already resigned to the idea of just renting it, since last night I was lucky enough to watch a summer movie arena reprise of IO NON HO PAURA.

What a beautiful, thought-provoking and yet powerfully emotional movie. I highly recommend it to all of you.

The child actors are all very good, especially the one playing ten-year-old Michele, the lead character, who shows a sweetness, an authenticity and also an acting range that astonished me. Then I saw the credits, at the end, and I couldn't believe it was this boy's first time on screen.

*********** MILD SPOILERS ALERT **********

The ending made me feel a lump in my throat, but actually the whole picture is such a graceful and moving rendition of an altogether quite tragic reality that plagued Italy for a very long time, especially in the Seventies (the story takes place in that by now remote era), i.e. the ransom-aimed kidnapping of the young children of rich people.

Here Filippo, the kidnapped little boy, is inhumanely kept in a cave like a dirty animal - until his "guardian angel" comes, embodied by Michele, a kid of his same age. The tale of their mutual discovery and of the evolving of their relationship has got a purity that allows us to hope for the better throughout the whole movie, despite whatever evil is meanwhile happening in front of us on the screen.

Famed Italian actor Diego Abatantuono (a fixture in virtually all of his friend Gabriele Salvatores' movies), in his tiny role of Sergio, the chief of the kidnappers, conveys a perfect sense of sleaziness, as he's willing to bury his usually charming screen persona under the skin of a classic villain. His Sergio is nonetheless a realistic, not cardboard, bad guy, with layers of his own.

Kudos to the amazing locations and the beautiful cinematography also.

All in all a 10 out of 10 vote, no doubt about that for me.

Remember Me, My Love (2003)

A delicate, multi-faceted, true and touching punch in your stomach

[10/10 · 27 February 2003]

Yesterday I saw this excellent movie, and it is still lingering in my brain and my soul.

I merely liked, not loved, Gabriele Muccino's smash Italian hit L'Ultimo Bacio when I saw it, since its depiction of thirtysomething doubts and fears left a sort of slightly fake aftertaste in my mouth. Plus, it waned out of my mind in a couple of hours, even though I had enjoyed while I was in the theatre.

Ricordati Di Me is a very, very different deal. It's a delicate, multi-faceted, true and touching punch in your stomach.

Well written and well played - especially by the extremely skillful and absolutely charming Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who's one of Italy's most gifted thesps as well as the longtime boyfriend of Rain Man's Valeria Golino (here you see him pouring his heart out onscreen with painful, searing directness) - the movie brings you into the home of a dysfunctional Italian family not dissimilar from so many dysfunctional Italian families.

Meet them: there is the melancholic, romantic, slightly frustrated husband Carlo (played by Bentivoglio), who's an obscure white-collar worker who once wanted to be a writer and keeps a sensitivity that leaves him totally exposed to raw emotions and to the eventual unfair blow of fate, all of this while keeping as well a still-unfinished novel in one of his drawers; then there is his VERY frustrated teacher wife (played by the ever-classy Laura Morante), who once wanted to be a stage actress. They've got two teenage kids, one of them a vain and egotistical 18-year-old daughter, keen on only one thing, i.e. becoming a TV starlet (played by stunning newcomer Nicoletta Romanoff), and the other one a vaguely leftish, pot-smoking daydreamer senior high schooler son (played by the director's brother).

Nothing new or revolutionary here, be sure of that, but the whole tale elaborated by Gabriele Muccino about the emotional disintegration of this apparently average family is narrated with passion and participation, both by its writer-director and by the actors.

The foursome meet enormous difficulties in communicating with each other - not only the parents with their children do, but also each of them with any other one, and egotism and indifference run rampant, especially in the veins of Valentina, the young daughter, who's a truly upsetting spectacle to watch, what with her relentless pursuing of a tinsel world, a world made of garish make-up, TV studios and squalid sex relationships with one or the other TV beefcake idol, since this girl, while still looking very innocent on the outside, would do anything to be cast in some cheesy TV show as one of the decorative babes who strut and grind in the background.

So, when you see Carlo, the husband, falling again - after many years - for married and unsatisfied mother of two Alessia (the ever-stunning Monica Bellucci, here way more expressive and intense than usual), an old flame of his youth, you just cannot think, not even for a second, of him as a middle-aged philanderer, or of Alessia as your typical homewrecker. The rekindling of their love is something so pure, so tender, so NEEDED by both these characters, that you can't help rooting for them - and be heartbroken when things just become spinning in a totally unpredicted direction, which I don't want to spoil for you.

I also truly appreciated the open ending, which leaves the audience enough room to imagine whatever they like for the future life of these characters, who've just been, anyway, through a journey able to break - once and for all - the walls of hypochrisy that previously surrounded them.

Go and see this movie, you won't regret it.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

A beautiful, soulful, thoughtful labour of love from Crowe and Cruise

[10/10 · 29 July 2002]

I decided to review this movie here on IMDB only after having read tons of other user comments, which are notoriously split (just like the "official" critics' are) on a fifty-fifty ratio: "This movie is awesome!!" ... "No, this movie is awful!!", and so on.

It surely is a love-it-or-hate-it picture, and the film-makers, best buddies Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise, have obviously always been fully aware of that.

I consider myself very much among those who love it.

I'm Italian, so I saw Abre Los Ojos (which was co-produced with Italian mini-major Lucky Red) long before I saw Vanilla Sky. I love Abre Los Ojos as well, but I enjoyed Vanilla Sky - lack of plot originality aside, natch - much more.

Vanilla Sky, being a Cameron Crowe movie, has all the deeply felt research of the lead character's soul that Abre Los Ojos - which is gripping and genial but rather cold - doesn't have.

I ached all the time for David (he's kind of a spoiled jerk, sure, but in his soul and mind are stirring, even before the accident, a thousand diverse feelings, and a refreshing confusion takes hold of him when he's in Sofia's apartment on that first - and last, actually - night they spent together).

On the contrary, I can't say I felt the same pain for César, who is an arrogant brat before, during and after the accident (perhaps it has to do with the fact that the Spanish lead character César is a 25-year-old, as was star Eduardo Noriega at the time, and therefore is much younger than 33-year-old David Aames, and even more so than star Tom Cruise, who was a 38-year-old when he shot Vanilla Sky).

That said, I saw Vanilla Sky more than once in the theater (bringing with me, each time, some very carefully selected, open-minded friend: they all loved it). Now I have seen it again on DVD.

Well, each and every time I found myself glued to my seat, even though I knew the story from the very beginning. I was simply mesmerized: this movie is so dense and thoughtful; I will never grew tired of it!

The credit here goes, in my opinion, mainly to the Herculean efforts of Tom Cruise, who has been my favorite actor since his wonderful turn in Born On The Fourth Of July, and as a matter of fact I think that David Aames shares more than a bit of rage, pain, desperation and bewilderment with Cruise's memorable Ron Kovic character, and even with his equally memorable Frank T.J. Mackey character from Magnolia.

Those, for me, are the ideal roles where Cruise can totally express his dashing persona and his powerful on-screen generosity (so I'm patiently waiting for September 27, when Minority Report and his John Anderton will finally grace the Italian theaters), far better than playing the sleepwalking, muzzled Bill Harford he had to play (forcing himself, in his own words) while enduring the slow agony of Eyes Wide Shut.

I can't help to admire how much he's grown (as an extremely accomplished, skilled and soulful thespian) since his beefcake teenage idol days.

I surely disagree with those who say he's overacted and/or has merely played himself here, cockiness and mugging included. Are you kidding? The first third of the movie HAD to show the very shallowness of David Aames: the cockiness and the mugging were vital for the entire following story development!

As for the "Tom Cruise merely plays himself" issue, I'd like to end this review with a quote from the great, late director Billy Wilder (it's taken from "Conversations with Wilder", the acclaimed 2000 book by Cameron Crowe): "He [Tom Cruise] is a thinking actor. He makes it look effortless. For example, Rain Man. It took several years for everyone to realize that the roles coul have been switched. That is a movie I would have liked to have seen - the crazy guy is the good-looking one. The ease in which he handles the hardest roles ... Tom Cruise, he's like Cary Grant. He makes the hard things look simple. On film, Cary Grant could walk into the room and say "Tennis anyone?" like no one else. You don't value the skill until you see a less skilled actor try the same thing. It's pure gold".

What can I add? It says everything. Those audiences who disliked Vanilla Sky might try again: it'll probably surprise them. It doesn't end to surprise me, either.