Clearly by my 3/10 rating, I didn't love this film, but let me first discuss what I found wonderful- and why I kept watching.
The cinematography is beautiful- stunning. I am going to live in Italy next year so that could by why I sat through the whole thing. But in whole a really beautifully made film. Stunning shots of little Italian villages and country side.
The filming was good too. Thoughtful, attentive.
The music won some award - I found it OK, didn't have much of a theme-- and at times it felt music was used for the sake of having music but can't complain.
Otherwise, the film was terrible. There was absolutely no point in setting it in Italy- it could have been anywhere (but thank goodness it was). It starts of with narration that isn't continued throughout the film- TELLING us about the character of the protagonist, as we watch her be like this. I.E. she was a sad girl = sad face. After the death of her 'caregiver' she missions it to Italy to find herself a house with everything a girl could need inside. If I really think about it, that house would have been empty for 16 years ... Not that I need every question to be answered just another flaw in the horrible, cheesy script.
Yeah, so she randomly goes for a swim somewhere beautiful, and looses her one important possession: this key. Then after looking for it, a boy appears out of the water passing it to her. She then sees him again later in a store where she finds out he is def and mute. At the end she falls in love with him, and it turns out they were friends as children and he just decided at age 5 to stop talking until she came back to him (...) This isn't even the main story line.
There's a ghost that gives her clues as to where to find pieces of the puzzles that lead her to the identity of her parents.
She also collects a group of friends. Static characters. I won't comment if they can act or not as I don't know! The script in itself was just terrible. A lot of telling, no enough showing. Yeah, they have their own love stories... leading to a dramatic confusion near the end...
I could go on and on with examples, but for the most part, the plot has many incredibly useless complications. And if you were to get down to the essence of the movie you could edit the whole thing down to 20 minutes. It loosely all comes together in the end, but no satisfactory feelings, or challenging ideas are evoked. Possibly should be a kids movie, hell! it might be.
As I mentioned above, the writing was horrible. This might be because it is a Finnish film in English (though there are no real flaws in the English apart from the over kill of 'girl' as a pronoun) with basically no Italian even between the Italians. The protagonist is meant to be British, but has an accent so (...) and the other main characters also speak good English, but with mixed British and American accents -odiously picked up from their teachers in Finland.
I would give the movie a 1/10 had it not featured so much of beautiful Italia. This director has tried really hard to be profound and capture the suffering of the human being - but instead characters come across self obsessed and shallow. 2D. Fake, indeed. It's not cheesy in that 'love to hate' way, but I actually was very bored for the most part. If you want to watch a movie of beautiful Italy like I did, watch Roman Holiday, To Rome with Love, Under the Tuscan Sun, Three pennies, or even Everyone says I love you. Not this.
The cinematography is beautiful- stunning. I am going to live in Italy next year so that could by why I sat through the whole thing. But in whole a really beautifully made film. Stunning shots of little Italian villages and country side.
The filming was good too. Thoughtful, attentive.
The music won some award - I found it OK, didn't have much of a theme-- and at times it felt music was used for the sake of having music but can't complain.
Otherwise, the film was terrible. There was absolutely no point in setting it in Italy- it could have been anywhere (but thank goodness it was). It starts of with narration that isn't continued throughout the film- TELLING us about the character of the protagonist, as we watch her be like this. I.E. she was a sad girl = sad face. After the death of her 'caregiver' she missions it to Italy to find herself a house with everything a girl could need inside. If I really think about it, that house would have been empty for 16 years ... Not that I need every question to be answered just another flaw in the horrible, cheesy script.
Yeah, so she randomly goes for a swim somewhere beautiful, and looses her one important possession: this key. Then after looking for it, a boy appears out of the water passing it to her. She then sees him again later in a store where she finds out he is def and mute. At the end she falls in love with him, and it turns out they were friends as children and he just decided at age 5 to stop talking until she came back to him (...) This isn't even the main story line.
There's a ghost that gives her clues as to where to find pieces of the puzzles that lead her to the identity of her parents.
She also collects a group of friends. Static characters. I won't comment if they can act or not as I don't know! The script in itself was just terrible. A lot of telling, no enough showing. Yeah, they have their own love stories... leading to a dramatic confusion near the end...
I could go on and on with examples, but for the most part, the plot has many incredibly useless complications. And if you were to get down to the essence of the movie you could edit the whole thing down to 20 minutes. It loosely all comes together in the end, but no satisfactory feelings, or challenging ideas are evoked. Possibly should be a kids movie, hell! it might be.
As I mentioned above, the writing was horrible. This might be because it is a Finnish film in English (though there are no real flaws in the English apart from the over kill of 'girl' as a pronoun) with basically no Italian even between the Italians. The protagonist is meant to be British, but has an accent so (...) and the other main characters also speak good English, but with mixed British and American accents -odiously picked up from their teachers in Finland.
I would give the movie a 1/10 had it not featured so much of beautiful Italia. This director has tried really hard to be profound and capture the suffering of the human being - but instead characters come across self obsessed and shallow. 2D. Fake, indeed. It's not cheesy in that 'love to hate' way, but I actually was very bored for the most part. If you want to watch a movie of beautiful Italy like I did, watch Roman Holiday, To Rome with Love, Under the Tuscan Sun, Three pennies, or even Everyone says I love you. Not this.
