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| Malena |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 92 m |
| Public Rating: 4.57 (30 votes) |
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/Romance |
Year: 2000 |
| Writer(s): Giuseppe Tornatore, Luciano Vincenzoni |
| Distributor: Miramax (US) |
| Reviewed by: Matthew Coats |
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Giuseppe Tornatore is probably best known for his fantastic film Cinema Pardiso, a great movie about how movies affect some children in Sicily. Most of his films contain heavy sentimentality and an emphasis on the power of cinema. Malena is no different, except that the story focuses more on the coming of age of one boy.
Renato Amoroso (Giuseppe Sulfaro) is a 12 year old boy who develops a crush on a beatiful woman in their Sicilian village. She is Malena (Monica Bellucci), and is the topic of constant, unwarranted gossip in the town. The film explores different aspects of Sicilian culture and human cruelty. The women gossip about her, slandering her for being a whore and stealing all the town's men.
Renato's crush becomes more and more of a love from afar. Every erotic picture he sees becomes a picture of her. In a humorous scene he steals a pair of her underwear and falls asleep with it over his face, only to have his parents wake him up in that position the following morning. But, my favorite aspect of his romance is that he imagines movies with him and her in them. Movies where he's a gladiator killing another gladiator who slandered Malena's name, etc. He imagines all kinds of movie cliches whith the two of them.
The movie takes place during World War 2, and continues till the end of the war, and it's quite historically accurate, and a great backdrop for the entire story. As the town gossips about Malena she loses her job, and everything she owns, and ends up becoming a prostitute for food. But Renato's love for her is still strong.
The movie over all is quite powerful. At times, it's funny, and at other times it's quite sentimental and heart breaking. It is quite good, albeit slow moving.
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