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For the love of love
[Photo: Miramax]
Monica Bellucci plays the title character, the object of a young boy’s desire in Malena. |
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 1, 2001
An Italian tale of first love, Malena exudes a quiet sensuality that also reveals a palpable despair amid the tension of Fascist World War II.
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Giuseppe Tornatore remembers the summer of '42, both the season and Robert Mulligan's bittersweet 1971 film of that name. Tornatore's Malena owes much of its plot and amusement to the earlier coming-of-age drama.
Rather than on a New England shoreline, Malena is set in World War II Sicily, where Mussolini's Fascist politics are in vogue. The boy growing up is named Renato (newcomer Giuseppe Sulfaro), not Hermie, but they share awakening hormones, roused by an older woman. In Renato's case, her name is Malena (Monica Bellucci) and she's very bella, indeed.
Renato, age 10, is too young for long pants and grown-up barber chairs. Certainly too young to seduce a woman like Malena. But he tries as little boys will, by arranging to walk close to Malena or writing mash notes that are never delivered. Renato spies on her private life, fueling his first experiments with masturbation.
Nobody else sees how lonely Malena lives. The entire town gossips about her, inventing wild tales. One of the best sequences in the film shows Renato observing everybody as they watch Malena in the piazza, prompting the child to indulge in earthy revenge.
Like Jennifer O'Neill's character in Summer of '42, Malena is married to a soldier sent to the battlefield weeks after their union. Again, there will be tragic news from the front. At that point, Tornatore veers away from Mulligan's outline to create a heart-wrenching story of degrading survival, public humiliation and puppy love.
Tornatore is a shameless romantic about movies, evidenced by his U.S. breakthrough with Cinema Paradiso. Malena invests the filmmaker's passion with Renato's fantasy, creating lively spoofs of such classics as Tarzan, the Ape Man and Stagecoach with the boy and his dream woman in starring roles. The mood of Malena is so frivolous at times that the final act's turn to tragedy seems jarring.
Yet it is no more distracting than Bellucci can be. Her role is nearly wordless for an hour, but Bellucci communicates plenty with the innate carnality of a young Sophia Loren. She isn't posed as a sex object, but her manner and physical beauty make it difficult to consider her otherwise. Lots of movies hinge on a feminine object of desire, rarely this desirous. Bellucci makes you consider all the crazy things you do for love.
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Malena
- Grade: B+
- Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
- Cast: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico, Matilde Piana Screenplay: Giuseppe Tornatore
- Rating: R; sexual situations, nudity, profanity, violence
- Running time: 92 min.
- Now playing: Regal Channelside 9 in Tampa
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