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Summary This little Italian film is an atmospheric character piece featuring an odd little man.
Undone by love and bad endings.Titta di Girolamo (Servillo) is almost ordinary in his oddness, though he is not some crazy psycho. Instead, he is just a lonely, shy man, growing old in a hotel, sitting by the window, watching life go by as his own life goes nowhere.He’s an occasional drug user and an insomniac who obsesses about sleep and listens to his fellow hotel inhabitants’ secrets. He has his own secrets, though, as we discover as the story unfolds.He is also somehow bound up with the Mafia, as we come to realise when, once a week, he delivers a bag of money to a bank.Directed by Paolo Sorrentino back in 2004, you can see how this film presages the work he did on the critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated Il Divo: La spettacolare vita di Giulio Andreotti (2008), which was visually compelling, though a bit dense for someone not familiar with the ins and outs of Italian politics.This soundtrack features some great (and familiar) Italian electronic music and the cinematography is detailed and layered.There are all sorts of visual markers which highlight Di Girolamo’s alienation from life around him.He is constantly watching life pass him by through another medium – a doorway or a window or a heroin-fuelled haze – but when he finally plunges back into life it starts catching up to him.Things happen around him – funny and odd and sad – but he just watches, never laughs, never interacts.That is, until he makes an unlikely connection with a waitress at the hotel and writes himself a reminder not to underestimate the consequence of love – which is where the title comes from – as he finds himself starting to live again.The film moves at a glacial pace until three-quarters of the way through, when the action suddenly picks up dramatically and the ending comes out of left field with a total non sequitur.Unfortunately, things fall apart on a filmic level as his very actions become more human and relate-able.There’s a voice-over throughout the film which gives you an insight into his frame of mind, but at the end the last scene would have had more dramatic oomph if there wasn’t some sort of explanation.The simple image would have been more effective and in keeping with what went before. As it is, the film loses out on a star because it suddenly undoes its own set-up.LE CONSEGUENZE DELL’AMORECONSEQUENCES OF LOVEDIRECTOR: Paolo SorrentinoCAST: Toni Servillo, Olivia Magnani, Adriano GianniniCLASSIFICATION: TBARUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
