Facing Windows (5/10)

Copyright © 2004 by Tony Medley

The film opens in a bakery in which one man kills another and runs out into the nighttime. He comes to a crossroads, stops, ponders, and then chooses one over the other and runs away.

Sixty years later Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and her husband, Filippo (Jilippo Nigro) run into a confused elderly man (Massimo Girotti) on a bridge. Against Giovanna’s wishes, Filippo brings him into their home, which also houses their two small children.  All they know about him is that he calls himself Simone. Who is Simone? What is his problem and story?

Compounding Giovanna’s problems are the fact that Filippo is a gross underachiever, she has a job she doesn’t like, and there’s an attractive man in the next building that she watches from her window.

All these things come together in her life to make it even more complicated before the light dawns. This is a story that could easily have been told in 80 minutes. At 108 minutes it is extraordinarily slow and draggy. In Italian with subtitles.

May 28, 2004

The End