It's a well filmed, interesting, mysterious romance, but there were moments when the sentiment felt slapped on with a trowel.
She's in an unhappy marriage. Her husband is an irresponsible schmuck. They meet a befuddled, lost old man on the street and the husband insists on taking him home. The woman starts to get involved with the man across the street, whose windows face her apartment. The old man's situation seems to encourage the affair. All very interesting.
And it plays out well. It's moving, it's compelling, it made me laugh out loud, it made me feel sympathy pangs for the characters.
But something about it felt weak, easy, and sort of bland. I found myself paying attention to the subtitles, trying to pick out individual Italian words, wondering if I could use foreign films to learn foreign languages. In other words, there were times when I was bored.
A led to B led to C, and sometimes the dot to dot was so obvious I wanted them to cut to the end of the alphabet, or shake things up a bit. Things do get resolved in the film -- there is "growth" -- but it sort of feels like we only grew just a little bit.
It's worth seeing. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. It's a competent, romantic film that left me vaguely unsatisfied.
She's in an unhappy marriage. Her husband is an irresponsible schmuck. They meet a befuddled, lost old man on the street and the husband insists on taking him home. The woman starts to get involved with the man across the street, whose windows face her apartment. The old man's situation seems to encourage the affair. All very interesting.
And it plays out well. It's moving, it's compelling, it made me laugh out loud, it made me feel sympathy pangs for the characters.
But something about it felt weak, easy, and sort of bland. I found myself paying attention to the subtitles, trying to pick out individual Italian words, wondering if I could use foreign films to learn foreign languages. In other words, there were times when I was bored.
A led to B led to C, and sometimes the dot to dot was so obvious I wanted them to cut to the end of the alphabet, or shake things up a bit. Things do get resolved in the film -- there is "growth" -- but it sort of feels like we only grew just a little bit.
It's worth seeing. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. It's a competent, romantic film that left me vaguely unsatisfied.