Interview. Giuseppe Tornatore.

"Giuseppe Tornatore's sleazy Hitchcockian thriller, The Unknown Woman, keeps you glued to the screen despite your increasingly nagging doubts about its integrity," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Just under two hours, sumptuously photographed in noirish shades and slathered in spine-tingling music by Ennio Morricone, it twists every which way to sustain suspense until the final frame."

Nick Dawson talks with Tornatore about "his all-consuming love of cinema, the strong female figures in his films, and his long-running working partnership with Ennio Morricone."

Updated through 5/31.

"If you remember Giuseppe Tornatore as the director of Cinema Paradiso, the 1988 ode to Il cinema that was immediately destined for those cheesy Academy Award montages, then the Italian director's new movie is not going to change anything," writes Nicolas Rapold in the New York Sun. "Last seen putting Monica Bellucci (and slavering audiences) through paces in 2000's Malèna, Mr Tornatore now delivers a protracted, forgettable revenge thriller. The Unknown Woman, which opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center, turns the plight of an escapee from the sex trade into something preposterous."

In the Voice, Ella Taylor wonders "how this repellent piece of garbage managed to win no less than five Italian Oscars."

But Jeffrey M Anderson, writing at Cinematical, finds it to be "a restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor.... [L]ike the violent crime (giallo) films of his countrymen Dario Argento and Mario Bava, Tornatore's The Unknown Woman gets by on sheer guts and style."

Martin Tsai talks with Tornatore for the New York Sun.

Earlier: James Van Maanen.

Update, 5/31: The Unknown Woman is "an exceptionally well-made example of the kind of delirious, semi-Gothic, overcooked melodrama filmmakers from the Boot have long specialized in," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "Maybe this is a serious picture about sexual slavery and the exploitation of Eastern European women in Italy, and maybe it's an upscale remake of I Spit on Your Grave - and who am I to say it can't be both?"

Posted by dwhudson at May 30, 2008 12:47 AM