Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

mallaverack A number of reviews here seem a little harsh even though a number of faults, particularly in the direction, can hardly be glossed over. I agree that the flashbacks add confusion to not so much the events but to the dramatic atmosphere of individual scenes. When one feels a certain empathy with a character is being elicited, the viewer is suddenly hurtled into another time and place.Hardly a 'spoiler', we know that the major characters portrayed more than adequately by Zingaretti and Bellucci, are executed by the partisans. But at the end of the film, I found myself asking the obvious: "What were their crimes that deserved the ultimate punishment"? There seems to have been an awareness of motives and actions of the ill-fated couple that is not adequately revealed in the film's plot. Nevertheless, this story led me to further explore historical facts relating to the waves of vengeance by anti-Mussolini forces, once the Nazis departed. The production values are commendable and despite some finding fault with the performances of Bellucci and Zingaretti, surely Alessio Boni as Golfiero deserves our praise.

fanbaz-549-872209 Orson Welles once said there are 52 million great actors in Italy, none of them work in films. Cards on the table. I am an Italian. I write movies and act in movies and there are some moments in Italian movies that are like no other. New moments. Acts of inspired imagination. Leone had them by the yard. Fellini the same. I could name a dozen. But this film is nothing more or less than two and a half hours of soft porn and cheap emotions. If you like a lot of simulated copulation and have hours of nothing better to do, then this one is for you. But it is sure as hell not one for me. Time to go and check out Bitter Rice to take the taste out of my mouth.

groggo This 148-minute (far too long) film is so confusing that you're not sure at times if you're watching a film in 'real' time or watching flashbacks on flashbacks.The movie is based on two real characters -- actors Luise Ferada (Monica Bellucci) and bombastic Osvaldo Valenti (Luca Zingaretta) -- who were big movie stars in fascist Italy before and during the Second World War. Despite the film's length, their motivations and personalities are never really explored. We know that they're cocaine users and so consumed with themselves that they are basically indifferent to the fascism that ultimately does them in. This is a film that should be alive with the frenetic tempo and intrigue of the times, but it's instead oddly static. It is difficult to imagine at times that a war is going on all around the many characters who weave in and out of the frames -- so many in fact that the viewer starts losing track of who is a fascist, who is a resistance fighter (partisan) or who, like the lead characters, is basically a person who doesn't much care one way or the other. This film should have been far more interesting, engrossing and exciting, but it settles instead for a confusing love affair and a strange, leisurely pacing that undermines the film throughout. The director, Marco Giordana, must take responsibility for this.

Lord_of_TERROR This was a well structured, well crafted film with excellent acting throughout even if it was, at times, somewhat overacted with Monica Belluci the main culprit. The spirit of this film is, I think, summed up by a wonderful scene where the Osvaldo and Luisa are hiding in the secret room of a country residence, all Ann Frank, with Osvaldo going through a sickening bout of withdrawal from morphine and cocaine. So bad is he, in fact, that as a peasant girl watches, Luisa reaches in to Osvaldo's pants and masturbates him to sleep before wiping her hand on the blanket and embracing the child, encouraging her to pursue love and iterating that it is a truly wonderful thing, even if the scene she's just witnessed is horrid. The girl goes on to get raped and murdered. You wouldn't get this in Hollywood. Though provoking, challenging, interesting, mobile.