It's an utterly gripping film. The story is about a Russian wife/mother in a rich and apparently close-knit Italian family, living the good life in Milan.
Tilda Swinton is at the heart of the film: another towering performance from someone who is, to my mind, fast becoming one of cinema's best actors.
We discover that there are the usual sordid dysfunctionalities lurking behind the perfect brand image: the tyrannical patriarch, an elderly grandfather who, before passing on the family firm, boasts that it will take two of his male relatives to replace him.
The lesbian daughter who can't tell anyone but her mother and a brother.
The brother who is engaged to someone the rest of the family considers everso slightly beneath them: the same brother who has a close male friendship that borders on homoeroticism.
The army of servants who go about their business in hushed and slightly scared reverence.
But never fear, because Tilda is going to embark on a course of action that will destroy everything: she is taking her son's friend as her lover.
The cinematography is intriguing -- lots of gentle zooms where everything is out of focus for what seems like an eternity: but, in fact, it just forces you to focus all the more sharply on what is on the screen.
Sound design that echoes and reverberates and is suddenly silenced (although there's some rather overenthusiastic soundtrack music at odd moments, too).
With some rather raunchy, er, intimacies, and some exquisite frocks, I want to see this film again, right now, to experience it all once more. I'm conscious it may all evaporate a second time, but the grip it's currently exerting is very strong. Intriguing and recommended.
5 comments:
am frothing
I'll come with you again! It was, you're right, utterly gripping and poignant and very, very beautiful...
Can we go for steak and chips again too?
Attractive, and of course I WILL see it, no doubt force-fed in Tuscany by Tot F and Tot C who will be wetting themselves with expectation. But make no mistake. Even if I have not seen this, I can critique it at length (bet you knew that already). Especially the ludicrous portrayal of Milan as a city of decading grandeur. The only moment in which Milan glimmers a little is right now, during Design Week, when 300k foreigners descend onto the city and turn it into a constellation of cool. Every countryard, every garden, every shop in the city puts on glorius design displays, some of which I might have to blog about tonight. It's precisely when you outnumber the Milanese that you get something beautiful out of Milan. The rest of the time? Geneva meets Detroit. With more traffic.
Rubbish. Awful. Cannot wait to lap it all up and deny I enjoyed every bit of it.
pod: You're gonna love it.
Lady V: I think you are the very worst vegetarian I know. Next time we'll do it at St John...
albeo: But, lovely man, YOU are in Milan, so of course it is unutterably cooool.
just saw that marisa berenson is in this. for THAT alone, i will watch it. the director is also the same film maker behind melissa P *total excrament* however he does seem to have style and a total hard on for tilda. so for that alone...
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