Federico falls in love with Carla but is not sure wether she is a prostitute or not. And he has got to find out. Beautiful, slow paced movie. A little silly with the salutes in italian and the dialogue in english though but I'll survive that.:) The name of Sidney Lumet in the opening credits made me watch the whole thing. And I didn't regret it at all. I liked it a lot.
****warning spoilers don't read this unless you've seen the movie.****
I thought this was an interesting movie. All the characters in it only give hints of the truth since they are too embarrassed or afraid to say it out loud. The people in it are having difficulties understanding eachother, and so are we trying to understand them. Everything is done in silence which opens up a big mystery. This wouldn't be a movie if the characters in it were more frank and to the point. But since they are shy, proud and embarrassed it becomes interesting. There are a couple of scenes that you can interpret in many different ways. Especially the ending. It's one of the better, most disturbing endings I've seen. It reminded me a whole lot about the ending in "the pledge" with j.nicholson. The ending doesn't kill your curiosity, on the contrary you are even more interested about the truth after the movie has ended than while it is going on. I don't know if the ambiguous ending is deliberate or if it's just poor directing. Anyway it turned out great, wether it was intended to be that way or not. I thought about different interpretations of the ending: 1) Carla was never a prostitute and federico had been wrong all along on suspecting her. The 100,000-lire prostitute was really someone else. 2) Carla was a prostitute but the woman on the phone only told half the truth by saying that she had had an accident but was coming back. She could easily have found another woman afterwards to take carlas place.
Federicos reaction about this phonecall is also hard to interpret: possible cases:
1) he was convinced he had been wrong all the time. 2) he was convinced carla was the girl and he got annoyed when he heard the woman on the phone saying "she still wanted to see him", knowing it was a lie. 3) he didn't care anymore about wether she was the one.
Anyway I had never heard about this movie before I saw it but I really enjoyed its brilliant ending. A big part of me wanted to see a more ordinary ending where u get all the pieces together but that movie would have been forgotten quickly, this one stays longer in your mind.
Another interesting topic of this film is Federicos reason for so desperately searching for the truth. I think he had different reasons, at first he probably just wanted to sleep with her and was simply curious. Later it became an important issue to him since he felt jealous as being her husband. Anyway a great movie.
****warning spoilers don't read this unless you've seen the movie.****
I thought this was an interesting movie. All the characters in it only give hints of the truth since they are too embarrassed or afraid to say it out loud. The people in it are having difficulties understanding eachother, and so are we trying to understand them. Everything is done in silence which opens up a big mystery. This wouldn't be a movie if the characters in it were more frank and to the point. But since they are shy, proud and embarrassed it becomes interesting. There are a couple of scenes that you can interpret in many different ways. Especially the ending. It's one of the better, most disturbing endings I've seen. It reminded me a whole lot about the ending in "the pledge" with j.nicholson. The ending doesn't kill your curiosity, on the contrary you are even more interested about the truth after the movie has ended than while it is going on. I don't know if the ambiguous ending is deliberate or if it's just poor directing. Anyway it turned out great, wether it was intended to be that way or not. I thought about different interpretations of the ending: 1) Carla was never a prostitute and federico had been wrong all along on suspecting her. The 100,000-lire prostitute was really someone else. 2) Carla was a prostitute but the woman on the phone only told half the truth by saying that she had had an accident but was coming back. She could easily have found another woman afterwards to take carlas place.
Federicos reaction about this phonecall is also hard to interpret: possible cases:
1) he was convinced he had been wrong all the time. 2) he was convinced carla was the girl and he got annoyed when he heard the woman on the phone saying "she still wanted to see him", knowing it was a lie. 3) he didn't care anymore about wether she was the one.
Anyway I had never heard about this movie before I saw it but I really enjoyed its brilliant ending. A big part of me wanted to see a more ordinary ending where u get all the pieces together but that movie would have been forgotten quickly, this one stays longer in your mind.
Another interesting topic of this film is Federicos reason for so desperately searching for the truth. I think he had different reasons, at first he probably just wanted to sleep with her and was simply curious. Later it became an important issue to him since he felt jealous as being her husband. Anyway a great movie.