Open Roads. Dispatch 3.

There are times during Giuseppe Tornatore's new film, The Unknown Woman, at which it becomes exceedingly difficult to stay seated, to resist the temptation to flee from the theatre or at least cover well both one's eyes and ears. I sat through Hostel, so I don't consider myself a lily-livered moviegoer, but so wrapped up in the plight of the title character and those around her had I become that when this woman begins "training" the little girl left in her care, the scene proved very nearly too much.

Later, this noted writer/director, perhaps Italy's most currently famous (Cinema Paradiso, The Legend of 1900, Maléna, among others), does dish out too much, going to the top and then over it, and for a time I thought the movie would not recover. Yet it did, leaving me extraordinarily moved and chastened. Tornatore is dealing here with the plight of women who are used for their sexuality then tossed away, but not before they are used for things even worse. The story of this Ukrainian woman seems exceedingly plausible, unfortunately, and it is told in flashbacks that intrude on her present life in Italy via sudden thoughts, sounds, visuals. All this is handled quite well by the director until he has us filling in the last few puzzle pieces, by which time we know far more than we imagined we might - much of it troubling indeed.

In the 20 years this filmmaker has been working, he has made but 10 movies, two of these segments of omnibus projects. And while he seems fated to be best remembered for Cinema Paradiso, which some find sentimental and overwrought (I am not among them), it is helpful to recall that, although he has made films like The Star Maker, A Pure Formality (which his current film recalls) and Everybody's Fine, it appears that many "fans" would prefer him to make another and another Cinema Paradiso ad infinitum. That he refuses is all to the good, I think. (And he did provide us with a longer director's cut of that popular film, which, though perfectly fine, interesting and richer in some ways, was finally perhaps no better than the original version.)

Rather than give away any more of The Unknown Woman's story, I urge you to see it, if possible. Shockingly enough, it has as yet no US distributor, even though it bears the Tornatore credentials (plus a heavy enough dose of sex and violence that, were it American, would have the film snapped up immediately). Nominated for more David di Donatello awards (the Italian "Oscars") than any other film this year, it boasts a stellar cast including Michele Placido (unrecognizably different from his role in Desert Roses!), Claudia Gerini (Secret Journey), Pierfrancesco Favino (El Alamein), Alessandro Haber (also from Desert Roses), Margherita Buy (Not of This World) and a wonderful young actress named Clara Dossena. The title character is played by Ksenyia Rappoport, a Russian actress who will, I expect, win just about any award for which she is nominated. By turns ugly, beautiful, plain, weird, and utterly real, her performance is simply astounding.

And now we come to the showpiece of the Open Roads series, the movie pared down from a 200-minute Italian television series to approximately 130-minute length. Helmed by theatre, film and television director Angelo Longoni with cinematography by one of the masters of the art, Vittorio Storaro, and starring Italy's man of the moment, Alessio Boni, in the title role and featuring an international cast that hails from France, Spain, England, Germany, Canada and elsewhere, Caravaggio makes its debut this evening, with a Sunday matinee replay. Both are screenings are sold out. While I found this the series' biggest disappointment - particularly given the inflated expectations - if you love the work of the famed Italian artist, I should think the film, despite its faults, will be a must-see.

American audiences will have no way to judge the original, missing, as we are, more than an hour's worth of film. (Does this compare to the manner in which 20th Century Fox bowdlerized its original release of Visconti's The Leopard? Probably not, since The Leopard was not originally produced for television.) This remaining compression makes for an extremely episodic narrative; so many characters come and go so quickly that, if we manage to become interested in them, whoosh, that's it, bye-bye. Those who do stick around are the sort of stock figures often favored in film biographies. The actors try to give them as much depth as possible but they are consistently thwarted by a screenplay (credited to James H Carrington and Angela Purgatori) and editing that allows us to learn who the characters are and their major purpose in the film - and that's about it. There is certainly no strong narrative drive remaining.

Mr Boni acquits himself as well as possible, but even he, with the lion's share of screen time, comes off as a good-looking cipher who paints. What we mainly learn about him is that he's got quite a temper and is afraid of death (wow: we all have something in common with Caravaggio!). Death, in fact, is seen about as frequently as anybody else (except the title character). He appears (and appears and appears) as a faceless figure in a black hood and cape on a black horse who, from childhood onwards, scares the pants off our leading man. More than any other single thing, it is the introduction (and then re-introduction) of this tiresome cliché that reduces the entire endeavor to television level.

There is nudity aplenty (this was made for European TV, remember) plus one naughty scene between a courtesan and a clergyman that I imagine caused the Catholic Church much agita. The handling of the artist's homosexual proclivities is given its moment, too. How much of the story is true to history, I cannot say. This may very well be "as it was" (as the late Pope declared about Mel Gibson's Passion. These days, everyone's a film critic).

And yet. Would I sit through Caravaggio again? Yes - if only for the re-creation of those amazing paintings. And we do indeed learn something about how this artist worked and why his place in the history of art is so assured. Mr Storaro's cinematography is as spot-on as you'd expect. To watch the film is to get lost in its beauty and light. Sets, costumes, art direction: all splendid. Even the grime looks real.

Posted by dwhudson at June 8, 2007 2:22 AM