Film making is not about bringing together photography and theater, but painting and music. So said Robert Bresson, and Turkish director (but living and working in Italy) Ferzan Ozpetek shows how this is possible. Anna (a young and rich widow living a sheltered life, admirably played by Margherita Bui) discovers her deceased husband (with whom she was truly in love) had a gay lover. She traces this man, and discovers a whole world she had not dreamed of – just a few kilometers from home. She mourns her marriage for the second time, and is both repulsed and attracted by the former lover and his friends (living in a semi-incredible commune which FerzanOzpetek creates and describes in flourishing details). In the end she accepts this separate reality, discovering it inside herself as well as outside. At the beginning I was fascinated by the technical talents of Ferzan Ozpetek, and how he interprets other directors without actually copying them: the general atmosphere of the gay commune reminds me of Pedro Almodovar (the costumes, for example, and the terrace in Rome like the one in Madrid in Women on the verge of nervous breakdown). The way of picturing the streets of this old, lower-class area of Rome reminded me of Mario Martone and his film L’amore Molesto. By the time I realized the biggest debt is to Julian Shnabel’s Before Night Falls I was so much into the film that I did not care any more, and simply let myself being carried away by the magic of emotions. At the end …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
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