CANNES -- A hard thing to do, making an empty existence come alive onscreen. Paolo Sorrentino accomplishes this task in "The Consequences of Love", a film that meticulously dissects the world of a man robbed of his life even though he is still living it.
The writer-director lets both the soundtrack and screen fill his movie with carefully observed sounds and visual details that initially cloak his lead character, a solitary man trapped in a lonely life, in mystery. Then those same details gradually reveal who this man is.
This is, of course, art house fare. Many more festival dates may follow the film's Cannes debut, which should lead to distribution deals in a number of territories.
Titta Di Girolamo (veteran Toni Servillo) has spent the past eight years of his life in a respectable, modern hotel in an anonymous town in the Italian part of Switzerland. Always elegantly dressed, the 50-year-old runs through a pack of cigarettes a day while perched in the hotel lobby bar, speaking to no one, not even Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the attractive barmaid who tries to draws him out.
As we follow his routine, we learn that he is an insomniac, occasionally plays cards with the hotel's aging residents, including a nearly destitute gambler and his stoic wife, and has deliberately cut himself off from all family other than telephone calls. Two things are remarkable: Once a week for the past 24 years, he tells us in a narrative voice-over, he has been shooting heroin. The other thing is a suitcase full of money that arrives like clockwork, which he then drives -- the only outing he ever takes in his car -- to a nearby bank to be counted and deposited.
Sofia breaks his routine one day when she demands to know why in two years he has failed to acknowledge her presence. The next day, he actually sits at the bar, possibly "the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life."
Sorrentino now lets the mystery unravel: There is a Mafia connection, which we may have guessed, and the hotel is really his prison. Yet it is his embrace of this solitude and confinement that piques our curiosity. Even his eventual declaration of independence, undertaken on impulse and more an existential act than a bid for true freedom, is undertaken with a melancholy, fatalistic air.
The filmmaker's achievement is to interest us in someone who, despite tangential involvement in crime, drugs and assassinations, is really not that interesting. The third and most lively act also is the most problematic. Melodrama seizes the film, and much of its sense of mystery and fascination drains away. When fully revealed, Titta proves to be what he says he is early in the film: a man with "no imagination."
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
Fandango and Indigo Film in collaboration with Medusa
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Paolo Sorrentino
Producers: Domenico Procacci, Nicola Guiliano, Francesca Cima, Angelo Curti
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Lino Fiorito
Music: Pasquale Catalano
Costume designer: Ortensia de Francesco
Editor: Giogio Franchini
Cast:
Titta: Toni Servillo
Sofia: Olivia Magnani
Valerio: Adriano Giannini
Carlo: Raffaele Pisu
Isabella: Angela Goodwin
Director: Diego Ribon
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The writer-director lets both the soundtrack and screen fill his movie with carefully observed sounds and visual details that initially cloak his lead character, a solitary man trapped in a lonely life, in mystery. Then those same details gradually reveal who this man is.
This is, of course, art house fare. Many more festival dates may follow the film's Cannes debut, which should lead to distribution deals in a number of territories.
Titta Di Girolamo (veteran Toni Servillo) has spent the past eight years of his life in a respectable, modern hotel in an anonymous town in the Italian part of Switzerland. Always elegantly dressed, the 50-year-old runs through a pack of cigarettes a day while perched in the hotel lobby bar, speaking to no one, not even Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the attractive barmaid who tries to draws him out.
As we follow his routine, we learn that he is an insomniac, occasionally plays cards with the hotel's aging residents, including a nearly destitute gambler and his stoic wife, and has deliberately cut himself off from all family other than telephone calls. Two things are remarkable: Once a week for the past 24 years, he tells us in a narrative voice-over, he has been shooting heroin. The other thing is a suitcase full of money that arrives like clockwork, which he then drives -- the only outing he ever takes in his car -- to a nearby bank to be counted and deposited.
Sofia breaks his routine one day when she demands to know why in two years he has failed to acknowledge her presence. The next day, he actually sits at the bar, possibly "the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life."
Sorrentino now lets the mystery unravel: There is a Mafia connection, which we may have guessed, and the hotel is really his prison. Yet it is his embrace of this solitude and confinement that piques our curiosity. Even his eventual declaration of independence, undertaken on impulse and more an existential act than a bid for true freedom, is undertaken with a melancholy, fatalistic air.
The filmmaker's achievement is to interest us in someone who, despite tangential involvement in crime, drugs and assassinations, is really not that interesting. The third and most lively act also is the most problematic. Melodrama seizes the film, and much of its sense of mystery and fascination drains away. When fully revealed, Titta proves to be what he says he is early in the film: a man with "no imagination."
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
Fandango and Indigo Film in collaboration with Medusa
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Paolo Sorrentino
Producers: Domenico Procacci, Nicola Guiliano, Francesca Cima, Angelo Curti
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Lino Fiorito
Music: Pasquale Catalano
Costume designer: Ortensia de Francesco
Editor: Giogio Franchini
Cast:
Titta: Toni Servillo
Sofia: Olivia Magnani
Valerio: Adriano Giannini
Carlo: Raffaele Pisu
Isabella: Angela Goodwin
Director: Diego Ribon
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
CANNES -- A hard thing to do, making an empty existence come alive onscreen. Paolo Sorrentino accomplishes this task in "The Consequences of Love", a film that meticulously dissects the world of a man robbed of his life even though he is still living it.
The writer-director lets both the soundtrack and screen fill his movie with carefully observed sounds and visual details that initially cloak his lead character, a solitary man trapped in a lonely life, in mystery. Then those same details gradually reveal who this man is.
This is, of course, art house fare. Many more festival dates may follow the film's Cannes debut, which should lead to distribution deals in a number of territories.
Titta Di Girolamo (veteran Toni Servillo) has spent the past eight years of his life in a respectable, modern hotel in an anonymous town in the Italian part of Switzerland. Always elegantly dressed, the 50-year-old runs through a pack of cigarettes a day while perched in the hotel lobby bar, speaking to no one, not even Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the attractive barmaid who tries to draws him out.
As we follow his routine, we learn that he is an insomniac, occasionally plays cards with the hotel's aging residents, including a nearly destitute gambler and his stoic wife, and has deliberately cut himself off from all family other than telephone calls. Two things are remarkable: Once a week for the past 24 years, he tells us in a narrative voice-over, he has been shooting heroin. The other thing is a suitcase full of money that arrives like clockwork, which he then drives -- the only outing he ever takes in his car -- to a nearby bank to be counted and deposited.
Sofia breaks his routine one day when she demands to know why in two years he has failed to acknowledge her presence. The next day, he actually sits at the bar, possibly "the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life."
Sorrentino now lets the mystery unravel: There is a Mafia connection, which we may have guessed, and the hotel is really his prison. Yet it is his embrace of this solitude and confinement that piques our curiosity. Even his eventual declaration of independence, undertaken on impulse and more an existential act than a bid for true freedom, is undertaken with a melancholy, fatalistic air.
The filmmaker's achievement is to interest us in someone who, despite tangential involvement in crime, drugs and assassinations, is really not that interesting. The third and most lively act also is the most problematic. Melodrama seizes the film, and much of its sense of mystery and fascination drains away. When fully revealed, Titta proves to be what he says he is early in the film: a man with "no imagination."
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
Fandango and Indigo Film in collaboration with Medusa
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Paolo Sorrentino
Producers: Domenico Procacci, Nicola Guiliano, Francesca Cima, Angelo Curti
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Lino Fiorito
Music: Pasquale Catalano
Costume designer: Ortensia de Francesco
Editor: Giogio Franchini
Cast:
Titta: Toni Servillo
Sofia: Olivia Magnani
Valerio: Adriano Giannini
Carlo: Raffaele Pisu
Isabella: Angela Goodwin
Director: Diego Ribon
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The writer-director lets both the soundtrack and screen fill his movie with carefully observed sounds and visual details that initially cloak his lead character, a solitary man trapped in a lonely life, in mystery. Then those same details gradually reveal who this man is.
This is, of course, art house fare. Many more festival dates may follow the film's Cannes debut, which should lead to distribution deals in a number of territories.
Titta Di Girolamo (veteran Toni Servillo) has spent the past eight years of his life in a respectable, modern hotel in an anonymous town in the Italian part of Switzerland. Always elegantly dressed, the 50-year-old runs through a pack of cigarettes a day while perched in the hotel lobby bar, speaking to no one, not even Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the attractive barmaid who tries to draws him out.
As we follow his routine, we learn that he is an insomniac, occasionally plays cards with the hotel's aging residents, including a nearly destitute gambler and his stoic wife, and has deliberately cut himself off from all family other than telephone calls. Two things are remarkable: Once a week for the past 24 years, he tells us in a narrative voice-over, he has been shooting heroin. The other thing is a suitcase full of money that arrives like clockwork, which he then drives -- the only outing he ever takes in his car -- to a nearby bank to be counted and deposited.
Sofia breaks his routine one day when she demands to know why in two years he has failed to acknowledge her presence. The next day, he actually sits at the bar, possibly "the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my life."
Sorrentino now lets the mystery unravel: There is a Mafia connection, which we may have guessed, and the hotel is really his prison. Yet it is his embrace of this solitude and confinement that piques our curiosity. Even his eventual declaration of independence, undertaken on impulse and more an existential act than a bid for true freedom, is undertaken with a melancholy, fatalistic air.
The filmmaker's achievement is to interest us in someone who, despite tangential involvement in crime, drugs and assassinations, is really not that interesting. The third and most lively act also is the most problematic. Melodrama seizes the film, and much of its sense of mystery and fascination drains away. When fully revealed, Titta proves to be what he says he is early in the film: a man with "no imagination."
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
Fandango and Indigo Film in collaboration with Medusa
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Paolo Sorrentino
Producers: Domenico Procacci, Nicola Guiliano, Francesca Cima, Angelo Curti
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Lino Fiorito
Music: Pasquale Catalano
Costume designer: Ortensia de Francesco
Editor: Giogio Franchini
Cast:
Titta: Toni Servillo
Sofia: Olivia Magnani
Valerio: Adriano Giannini
Carlo: Raffaele Pisu
Isabella: Angela Goodwin
Director: Diego Ribon
Running time -- 100 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/13/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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