From my favorite movies..

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Orson Welles once said there are 52 million great actors in Italy, none of them work in films. Cards on the table. I am an Italian. I write movies and act in movies and there are some moments in Italian movies that are like no other. New moments. Acts of inspired imagination. Leone had them by the yard. Fellini the same. I could name a dozen. But this film is nothing more or less than two and a half hours of soft porn and cheap emotions. If you like a lot of simulated copulation and have hours of nothing better to do, then this one is for you. But it is sure as hell not one for me. Time to go and check out Bitter Rice to take the taste out of my mouth.

What a pity to see Inspector Montalbano wasting his talent in this period soap. The viewer endures endless soft porn images of middle aged Monica Bellucci - whose acting explores the gamut of facial expressions from "concerned about what's going to happen next" to "very concerned about what's going to happen next". Luca Zingaretti gives a one dimensional performance as the drug addicted love interest and various other actors come and go in a confused melange of flashback, fast forward and present time - all spinning like vapid moons in Bellucci's bosomy orbit. As for the plot - the less said the better. The movie revolves around the not-so-vexing question of whether the lovers will be killed by revengeful partisans - less plot device than mercy killing. Save your money and watch grass growing for 148 minutes - you'll have more fun with the grass.

I had read the other reviews here, and considered the film worth a viewing, though without high expectations.I was very disappointed. (However I think the criticism of Bellucci is a little harsh: her character as written and directed was so asinine that it seems unfair to complain that she played 'a sofa' as 'a sofa'!) The cutting to flashback (another comment on IMDb) was about the only feature which was interesting about this film. At least it kept me awake! For me, an immeasurably better portrayal of fascist 'minor celebrities' and their cocaine habits is to be seen in Bertolucci's Millenovecento. I appreciate that Bertolucci's masterpiece is better remembered for 'the goodies' Gerard Depardieu and Sterling Hayden - but Act II gets to grips with the other aspects of the Mussolini regime, and the excesses of the 'favoured'.

Maybe if the director went a little easy on the flashbacks and allowed actors to grow with the scene the results would have been different. For me, Zingaretti was way over the top, needing Bellucci's passiveness to balance the scenes. I don't see any other actress playing Luisa Ferida. In all, the film lacks historic references, making it feel empty. When the story asks for continuity Giordana gives us a flashback, when the scene is at the point of climax he brings it down with a harsh cut. The story of Luisa Ferida and Osvaldo Valenti is so rich and yet, the film focuses more on Luisa's two loves instead on focusing on the drama of living hard in a divided country.