Editor’s Note: Barrie
Pattison is singlehandedly covering the waterfront of the local Italian Film
Festival (and paying the inflated admission prices common to such events). You
can find his earlier reports if you click on the following film titles After the War, I Can Quit Whenever
I Want to: Masterclass, Let Yourself Go
and Messy Christmas
The Italian Film Festival's Amori che non sanno stare al mondo/Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World is intensely female, like writer-director Francesca Comencini’s 2009 Lo Spazio bianco, so much so that a bloke viewer is likely to feel uncomfortably like an eavesdropper.
We kick off with thirties-ish Lucia Mascino waking up and
immediately sending off needy texts to her ex-lover, who says he’d rather be put to
the rack that resume their relationship. After chatting with her female
neighbours, each with their own relationship dramas, needing a fifty Euro
recharge for her smart ‘phone is a major crisis.
The film stays with the intensely irritating Mascino, pulling
of the considerable feat of enlisting the audience to her point of view.
We see her as a disruptive speaker on a panel with white
fleck bearded Professor Thomas Trabacchi. Her interruptions get her into his
bed for a protracted relationship where they move in together. After make outs
and inexplicable Black & white inserts, they reach the point where she
wants to discuss feelings and he wants to rest up for the paper he has to
complete the next day. His lack of commitment (“I will not be prisoner of
a dream I don’t share”) triggers their break up “Take a suitcase. It’s
humiliating to be left by a man with a back pack.”
The separation is rough on Mascino despite the comforting of
her friends and meetings in the university wash room where women compare
experiences. However, Mascino finds consolation in an encounter with a
glamorous pole dancer which manages to generate some striking naked lesbian
love making.
Trabacchi meanwhile has paired with an appealing girl student
who makes it clear she wants a ring on her finger. Trabacchi pictures Mascino
criticing his conduct and burns her jacket that his betrothed has found in
their old retreat and which she uses to keep warm.
News of the marriage gets back to Mascino who faints but
rallies.
The former lovers later have a brief meeting and discuss the
direction of their lives. We are given the impression that Mascino has the
firmer grip on coming realities.
Some academic background, discussions of female orgasm and
lots of skin pore close close-ups in wide screen are part of the film’s intense
scrutiny. This one takes a lot of concentration. It’s not for everyone but I
would imagine it will enthuse an audience that will identify with its female
protagonist.
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