I think this movie is really, really good.
I watched it today for the second time, after four years since I first saw it. I didn't remember how the movie ended, making it worthwhile seeing it again.
I read the comments available here, and I realized that the people criticizing the movie do it mostly because of the movie's ending. These people claim that the ending was dull, that the way the assassin confesses his crime is too 'casual', and that the reason behind the murder isn't strong enough.
I do believe that these people didn't fully understand the movie, so I thought it was a good idea to explain my interpretation. The reason leading me to this conclusion is that the clues allowing one to put all the pieces of the puzzle together are quite subtle, and they might be harder to catch for people that aren't fluent in Italian, and that had to read the subtitles to understand them.
First important, and perhaps neglected, fact: Anna (the girl that was killed) witnessed how Angelo (the sick toddler) died. She was walking outside their house, and alerted (most likely) by Angelo's screams, she stormed into the kitchen trying to help the baby that was chocking on something that got stuck in his throat. Anna frantically called an ambulance asking for help, while the parents did nothing to save Angelo. They are guilty of letting it happen, which is both a crime and a painful memory for the two of them. Back then Anna was still unaware of her cancer.
Second: Anna eventually discovered that she was terminally ill, and wrote on her diary that she was feeling worse and worse as the days went by.
Third: Anna didn't fight back when she was assaulted by the lake. This suggests that she let herself die, an interpretation that is also given by the doctor commenting on the autopsy's results. He also hints at the fact that she could have had an agreement with the assassin.
So, with these pieces of information, my interpretation goes as follows.
Anna doesn't want to live anymore, she wants to die before her cancer will make her life unbearable. However, she doesn't want to commit suicide, because she knows that it would cause a terrible pain on her loved ones. She cannot ask her boyfriend either, because he is crazy in love with her, and would never help her to end her life.
She needs someone with a motive to kill her, so she starts behaving in such a way that will lead someone to indeed do it. The only person that could be driven to such an extreme action is Corrado, Angelo's father. She starts threatening him, with a carefully crafted sequence of moves. She calls him more and more often, she demands to see him constantly, reminding him that she will tell the police how things really went the day Angelo died. Eventually Corrado snaps and chokes her to death. This not only allows Anna to end her suffering, but also to take vengeance for Angelo's death, whom she loved dearly.
At first the murderer claims that he killed Anna because they were lovers but she became obsessed by their relationship, driving him insane. Obviously, this is a lie, and it was told to cover up what really happened the day Angelo died.
Maybe Angelo didn't swallow properly his food, and his father failed to save him from chocking because this was finally a way out of that nightmare. Or maybe his father intentionally gave him food that was too big to swallow for Angelo to choke. We'll never know this part of the story, as Chiara (Angelo's mother) states that she'll never say what Corrado was screaming that morning. And we'll never know for sure what really happened by the lake, whether Corrado killed Anna because she asked him to, making him understand that this was the only way for him not to be accused of his son's death, or because he snapped and assaulted her violently.
I do think that this movie is way more subtle than one might realize. And, apart from the sophisticated murder's plot, there are many other reasons that make it a gem: the amazing performances by both Servillo and Golino, the inspector's complex relationship with his daughter, which is constantly put under scrutiny with the comparisons drawn from Anna's experience, his wife's struggle with Alzheimer, the somewhat chaotic process of trial and error that the inspector has to face, with many false leads that constantly throw him in the wrong direction, and finally the very honest description of ordinary people, that seem good people with normal lives on the surface, but that deep down have many things to hide and undisclosed problems to face.
I watched it today for the second time, after four years since I first saw it. I didn't remember how the movie ended, making it worthwhile seeing it again.
I read the comments available here, and I realized that the people criticizing the movie do it mostly because of the movie's ending. These people claim that the ending was dull, that the way the assassin confesses his crime is too 'casual', and that the reason behind the murder isn't strong enough.
I do believe that these people didn't fully understand the movie, so I thought it was a good idea to explain my interpretation. The reason leading me to this conclusion is that the clues allowing one to put all the pieces of the puzzle together are quite subtle, and they might be harder to catch for people that aren't fluent in Italian, and that had to read the subtitles to understand them.
First important, and perhaps neglected, fact: Anna (the girl that was killed) witnessed how Angelo (the sick toddler) died. She was walking outside their house, and alerted (most likely) by Angelo's screams, she stormed into the kitchen trying to help the baby that was chocking on something that got stuck in his throat. Anna frantically called an ambulance asking for help, while the parents did nothing to save Angelo. They are guilty of letting it happen, which is both a crime and a painful memory for the two of them. Back then Anna was still unaware of her cancer.
Second: Anna eventually discovered that she was terminally ill, and wrote on her diary that she was feeling worse and worse as the days went by.
Third: Anna didn't fight back when she was assaulted by the lake. This suggests that she let herself die, an interpretation that is also given by the doctor commenting on the autopsy's results. He also hints at the fact that she could have had an agreement with the assassin.
So, with these pieces of information, my interpretation goes as follows.
Anna doesn't want to live anymore, she wants to die before her cancer will make her life unbearable. However, she doesn't want to commit suicide, because she knows that it would cause a terrible pain on her loved ones. She cannot ask her boyfriend either, because he is crazy in love with her, and would never help her to end her life.
She needs someone with a motive to kill her, so she starts behaving in such a way that will lead someone to indeed do it. The only person that could be driven to such an extreme action is Corrado, Angelo's father. She starts threatening him, with a carefully crafted sequence of moves. She calls him more and more often, she demands to see him constantly, reminding him that she will tell the police how things really went the day Angelo died. Eventually Corrado snaps and chokes her to death. This not only allows Anna to end her suffering, but also to take vengeance for Angelo's death, whom she loved dearly.
At first the murderer claims that he killed Anna because they were lovers but she became obsessed by their relationship, driving him insane. Obviously, this is a lie, and it was told to cover up what really happened the day Angelo died.
Maybe Angelo didn't swallow properly his food, and his father failed to save him from chocking because this was finally a way out of that nightmare. Or maybe his father intentionally gave him food that was too big to swallow for Angelo to choke. We'll never know this part of the story, as Chiara (Angelo's mother) states that she'll never say what Corrado was screaming that morning. And we'll never know for sure what really happened by the lake, whether Corrado killed Anna because she asked him to, making him understand that this was the only way for him not to be accused of his son's death, or because he snapped and assaulted her violently.
I do think that this movie is way more subtle than one might realize. And, apart from the sophisticated murder's plot, there are many other reasons that make it a gem: the amazing performances by both Servillo and Golino, the inspector's complex relationship with his daughter, which is constantly put under scrutiny with the comparisons drawn from Anna's experience, his wife's struggle with Alzheimer, the somewhat chaotic process of trial and error that the inspector has to face, with many false leads that constantly throw him in the wrong direction, and finally the very honest description of ordinary people, that seem good people with normal lives on the surface, but that deep down have many things to hide and undisclosed problems to face.