The movie is the latest film from Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore. Malena is a coming-of-age story set in a small Sicilian village during World War II. Our young hero, Renato, is smitten with Malena, a voluptuous war widow whose beauty and origins (she comes from a different village) make her an outcast in the town -- though the men are happy to ogle and whistle at her and swoop in for the kill as soon as her husband is reported killed. This being wartime and she being without any other means of support, she eventually becomes a prostitute to survive, and that's when things get really ugly. Let's just say the movie teaches a valuable lesson, namely, "Never piss off Sicilian women."
The film is slight and reasonably enjoyable, though when asked if I'd recommend it to my friends, I said no, mainly because so many better movies are out there, even in this relatively uninspired year. One of the things that bothered me most about the movie was its jarring transitions from comedy to tragedy. When the film sticks to comedy, it's charming, but the serious scenes don't work as well. The kid who plays Renato is very good and his maturation is nicely done. Likewise, the actress playing Malena barely has any lines, but she conveys a great deal of emotion silently. I just didn't get into the movie; I never connected with the characters. And most of the plot revolves around Malena, but we see her only through Renato's eyes, and all she really is to him is an object of lust. I got the sense, as he watched her degrade herself, that he was upset about it because she wasn't degrading herself with him, not because of how wretched she must feel. (By the way, in case you do see the film, I think some of the audience thought that the town's treatment of Malena was over the top, but from what I know about the history of women in Italy, it's pretty damn accurate, which is extremely disturbing.)
Now, before the movie started, a woman from the ad agency hosting the screening approached me and Scott -- because we were so visibly sophisticated, discerning, articulate, demographically desirable moviegoers -- and asked if we would stay behind after the movie for a small focus group, for which we would be paid $10. Well, of course we agreed, even before the $10 entered the picture. Me, turn down another chance to spout off my opinions? (I actually wrote that on the form -- one of the questions asked why we attended the screening, besides its being free; I wrote, "I like telling people my opinion.")
This woman was clearly not as judicious when it came to selecting the other members of the focus group. One of them was Miramax's wet dream -- in fact, I suspected he was a plant -- who kept saying, "I hate films with subtitles, but I loved this movie! After a few minutes, you forget you're reading!" Another gave me shuddering flashbacks to my high-school and college English classes by prattling about the symbolism of various things in the film -- the highlight had to be when she said, with an air of great deliberation, "Well, in the scene where the boys are burning the ant under a magnifying glass, I was thinking the ant was symbolizing Malena, or maybe Italy." I felt like saying, "Or maaaaaaybe... it could be boys being senselessly cruel just because they can be, and it could be the director's way of showing us that these boys are adolescents." But I didn't, because we were told to respect each other's opinions. Then there was the guy who started every remark with, "Having grown up over there..." (meaning Italy) and never seemed to get that nobody cared. Or the woman who complained the movie wasn't at all like Cinema Paradiso (which she pronounced "paradisio") -- I wanted to tell her, "You're the reason that Miramax spends its money on superficial, non-threatening foreign films like Malena instead of on more interesting stuff, and I don't like you."
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