This is a movie that only Euro-cinephiles could possibly enjoy. Think of Bergman reading this script. Think of what he would have done with the Marta-Lara arc ... or the Claudia-Carlo arc ... Or the horror with which Pietro says he regards the Holocaust ... Or revealing what Pietro and Steiner discuss in the car with the windows rolled up. The mind boggles.
All in all, Pietro is a thoroughly unsympathetic character. The amazing dramatic turn here is that he is completely sympathetic in Act I. But he proves to be so indulgently inert that, by the end of Act II, you don't care much whether he takes the job, screws the girl who walks the dog, lets his brother marry his daughter or jumps back in the ocean and ends it all.
The inescapable conclusion is that he only "changes" when Claudia finally fires him as a weirdly obsessed Daddy.
Obsessed with what and on what level? Obsessed with protecting his daughter figuratively? Obsessed with achieving personal redemption metaphorically?
While we're thinking this over, let's call time out for a long, gratuitously graphic sex scene.
And this scene advances the story exactly how? Maybe one good reason for that scene is that, hopefully, it will protect Miss Paladini (or Yoshimi -- whatever) from experiencing the totality of this mess for a few precious years.
All in all, Pietro is a thoroughly unsympathetic character. The amazing dramatic turn here is that he is completely sympathetic in Act I. But he proves to be so indulgently inert that, by the end of Act II, you don't care much whether he takes the job, screws the girl who walks the dog, lets his brother marry his daughter or jumps back in the ocean and ends it all.
The inescapable conclusion is that he only "changes" when Claudia finally fires him as a weirdly obsessed Daddy.
Obsessed with what and on what level? Obsessed with protecting his daughter figuratively? Obsessed with achieving personal redemption metaphorically?
While we're thinking this over, let's call time out for a long, gratuitously graphic sex scene.
And this scene advances the story exactly how? Maybe one good reason for that scene is that, hopefully, it will protect Miss Paladini (or Yoshimi -- whatever) from experiencing the totality of this mess for a few precious years.