Reviews

Original, touching, interesting, post-modern, uneasy. A movie stepping outside the "typical" Italian industry, putting itself on top of contemporary European film-making. A film directed by an author in search of a new language, able to melt plot, characters, psychology, into the flesh of his actors, into a streaming of disturbing situations. You may hate it, but there's no doubt that this is one of those movie that hit the audience, changing the point of view on love and relationships (and on cinema too) of every viewer. There were so many questions spinning in my head after watching this movie: what should be the purpose of contemporary film-making? How far you can push yourself in telling a story? How can you translate into images a psychological pathology? Isabella Ferrari's performance (awarded with the best actress's prize at Rome Film Festival in 2012) is impressing and stunning. She put herself completely in the hands of the director, giving it all, reaching the audience with her desperation, her pain, her loneliness. The loneliness caused by an impossible love. The kind of love that destroys everything. That destroys lives.

A grey-blue tunnel, neon lights, a surrealistic music and a girl "slowly" running through... That's the great, fashionable, beginning of Millennium Mambo. This start gives the film the right imprinting: everything you will see and hear from now on, will be equally beautiful and magic. But...

But there are no characters and it is very hard to be interested on the stories of Vicky and her silent, unemployed, boyfriend. everything is so, so boring. Why?

Now-a-days Chinese film-makers can be the best. The best in cinematography, in composing good scores, in acting, in art direction, but sometimes they miss the story. Like in Millennium Mambo.

Best is a very very boring film. There isn't any reason to watch it: even if you like football you are not interested in this character (I mean just the movie character, not the real George Best). You can't understand, during the film, the reason of his alcohol addiction, of his rebellion to every rules... So this George Best looks like a dumb guy, a star without a brain, able just to throw away all he owns.

Even the other characters are just masks: the good trainer and the bad trainer, the girl who tries to exploit him and the football player who hates him just because he is, above all, the best.

I think that both writers and director thought that would be very simple make a movie from a famous and scandalous football player as George Best, but movies are different from real life. It's not enough saying: things went this way. You might create something different...

I hope to see, soon, a good film about football.