Malèna

Directed by Guiseppe Tornatore
Staring Monica Bellucci (Malèna) and Giueseppe Sulfaro (Renato)

Renato is a boy growing up in Sicily during the second world war. He obsesses over Malèna, the drop-dead gorgeous widow of an Italian soldier. We see Reanto come of age at the same time we see Malèna through his eyes - she is slowly forced into prostitution to survive.

I didn't like a single character in this entire movie. It's a hell of a remedy for people pining for the "good old days" - villages full of uneducated rubes attacking things they don't understand are something we should be striving to distance ourselves from, not emulate. There are no sympathetic characters in this movie - not Renato, not Malèna, not anyone.

During a late scene in the movie (after Sicily is liberated by the Allies) the women of the town drag Malèna out of her apartment and kick the snot out of her - then the cut off her hair and tear what little clothing she's wearing to rags. All this is done in front of the entire village - their silence giving tacit approval to this barbarism. As it happened I remembered an earlier scene of the Allies bombing the village, and all I could think was "they should have been more thorough".

So this movie was a real downer - well acted, but still a downer.