User Reviews

The film is a love story: the story of a couple in love at the time of economic and social crisis. In the film there are no big surprises, the film's setting is everyday life so close to you that you seem to recognize the characters. Despite that the film is beautiful and a lot. A movie that makes you dream, romantic and fun, but with a great sense of emotion. A film about the purity, the bizarre nature of human beings: people who are not heroes, they're not bad, maybe just mediocre or sadly normal, beautiful creatures in their authenticity, with their flaws, real and authentic characters that make antidote and medicine to the ugliness of our times. The film has a lot of mixed feelings: sometimes it makes you laugh, others cry and it makes you sad. The film has a sweet soul but sometimes sour. It makes you move to tears, then laugh then something happens that will create a lump in the throat. This rhythm and this ability is the strength of this Virzi film. The narrative mechanism is actually very simple and the film has no stars. The two protagonists are actually not the protagonists: Thony, Antonia in the film, not even a professional actress. Some scenes seem extemporaneous. Guido is a very positive guy, shy and gentle. The story that lie at the bottom of the film is pretty real but Guido is a very real character from bygone days, sophisticated (although he's from Livorno), an eccentric creature, unusual but interesting, a pure character. He's spurred on by the literature that lives in his mind, but anyway he manages to be concrete and fussy in many details of his daily life: he cooks, irons, obliterates the bus tickets. Antonia, the female protagonist, is a woman that ask a lot to her man. She like being chased, she's funny, touchy and a little ignorant. Guido is clumsy but precise, meticulous, fascinating character with a kind of comic side. The film tells the story of a couple where we seem to decipher their relationship as a redeeming work by a generous man towards a poor and unfortunate woman, but in the end we are told a different story that is she has picked up him, a kind of a hermit and that she saved his life. Moral: love can save lives.

First, let me say that I rate Paolo Virzi's "Ovosodo" as one of the best Italian movies of the last 30 years.

The soundtrack (i guess they're all written and sung by the actress Thony) is really warm and beautiful, arguably the best part of the movie, and now and then you get some of hints of the great and funny Virzì's style.

That said, it's the same old universal story: a couple struggling with some problem. And you we get the usual average Italian actors, nice, funny and OK but you can always tell that they are acting. And that's no good acting.

I guess You can skip this one...