Malèna (2000)
Country: IT/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Cast: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico
Synopsis:
In a small Sicilian town during the war an adolescent boy nurses a secret love for the local beauty, and we learn of her tragic life.
Review:
With its scenes of pubescent boys chasing around on bicycles to catch yet a further glimpse of Bellucci's voluptuously swaying curves, this is like a prolonged sketch from a Fellini movie, and that is its first weakness. The second is that, as if aware that the picture risks being a paean to the wet dream, with distinctively Italian broad comic asides, the director veers sharply halfway through into the realms of calumny and cruelty. Malèna, as if embodying the predicament of any stunning beauty in a provincial town - and indeed of the actress herself - is defined by her looks: to the women she is a threat, to the men, hero included, an object of prurient curiosity and desire. Thus when she shrugs her shoulders and begins to live the way everyone says she has been - as a consort of the German officers - her fall on liberation day to the status of (literally) downtrodden whore is gloatingly portrayed. That she subsequently returns to the town, and, now that she has a husband again, regains the respect of the womenfolk, almost beggars belief, as does the passivity of the narrator-hero. He is in fact merely a cipher, a proxy for the director's own contemplation and immolation of the great nymph Bellucci, who exposes herself courageously here in both goddess and whore capacities. On balance, then, an episodic, at times lurid, film which seems to take its cue from the gossipy ravings of the small-minded inhabitants of this town and become, like the hapless Malèna, that which it despises.
Country: IT/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Cast: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico
Synopsis:
In a small Sicilian town during the war an adolescent boy nurses a secret love for the local beauty, and we learn of her tragic life.
Review:
With its scenes of pubescent boys chasing around on bicycles to catch yet a further glimpse of Bellucci's voluptuously swaying curves, this is like a prolonged sketch from a Fellini movie, and that is its first weakness. The second is that, as if aware that the picture risks being a paean to the wet dream, with distinctively Italian broad comic asides, the director veers sharply halfway through into the realms of calumny and cruelty. Malèna, as if embodying the predicament of any stunning beauty in a provincial town - and indeed of the actress herself - is defined by her looks: to the women she is a threat, to the men, hero included, an object of prurient curiosity and desire. Thus when she shrugs her shoulders and begins to live the way everyone says she has been - as a consort of the German officers - her fall on liberation day to the status of (literally) downtrodden whore is gloatingly portrayed. That she subsequently returns to the town, and, now that she has a husband again, regains the respect of the womenfolk, almost beggars belief, as does the passivity of the narrator-hero. He is in fact merely a cipher, a proxy for the director's own contemplation and immolation of the great nymph Bellucci, who exposes herself courageously here in both goddess and whore capacities. On balance, then, an episodic, at times lurid, film which seems to take its cue from the gossipy ravings of the small-minded inhabitants of this town and become, like the hapless Malèna, that which it despises.
Country: IT/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Cast: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico
Synopsis:
In a small Sicilian town during the war an adolescent boy nurses a secret love for the local beauty, and we learn of her tragic life.
Review:
With its scenes of pubescent boys chasing around on bicycles to catch yet a further glimpse of Bellucci's voluptuously swaying curves, this is like a prolonged sketch from a Fellini movie, and that is its first weakness. The second is that, as if aware that the picture risks being a paean to the wet dream, with distinctively Italian broad comic asides, the director veers sharply halfway through into the realms of calumny and cruelty. Malèna, as if embodying the predicament of any stunning beauty in a provincial town - and indeed of the actress herself - is defined by her looks: to the women she is a threat, to the men, hero included, an object of prurient curiosity and desire. Thus when she shrugs her shoulders and begins to live the way everyone says she has been - as a consort of the German officers - her fall on liberation day to the status of (literally) downtrodden whore is gloatingly portrayed. That she subsequently returns to the town, and, now that she has a husband again, regains the respect of the womenfolk, almost beggars belief, as does the passivity of the narrator-hero. He is in fact merely a cipher, a proxy for the director's own contemplation and immolation of the great nymph Bellucci, who exposes herself courageously here in both goddess and whore capacities. On balance, then, an episodic, at times lurid, film which seems to take its cue from the gossipy ravings of the small-minded inhabitants of this town and become, like the hapless Malèna, that which it despises.