Malena

A young Italian boy comes of age while being infatuated with Malena (Monica Bellucci) during the reign of Il Duce. In fact, every guy in the town is in love with Bellucci, and boy do the ladies hate it. It plays like a fairy tale about the dangers and self-fulfilling prophecy of objectification, showing the effects of small-minded gossip on a lonely woman who happens to be gorgeous. In its broad outline, it's not too unlike "Pan's Labyrinth": a young child whose imagination tends to the fantastic, using it to cope with adolescence during a time of war. But though the movie focuses on the boy, we know very little about him, other than that he loves Malena. I would have liked a little less coming of age and a little more Bellucci, which makes me like every man in this Italian town, which makes me seem like a pig, which makes me feel bad.

"Malena" is gorgeously shot, with an always scrolling camera that shows all the rooms and landscapes from every angle without cutting too much. When it does use cuts, it's with a deft touch. For instance, there's a scene where Bellucci is waiting outside a door for someone to drop a key down to her while the kid looks on. The film alternates between shots of him and of her, and while the shots of the kid are all the same distance, the shots of Bellucci alternate between long-range, medium, and close-up, in sync with the kid's emotional attachment to her as she goes through the motions of sneaking into this guy's house and the kid feels further from her when he thinks she's seeing another man. Though the result isn't perfect, people put thought into this movie, which is more than can be said for most these days.

Italian films always seem like the people are overacting, but I think that's just what Italians are like. Not Italian-American, but Italian-Italian. Big arm gestures and people shouting things like "badachoota, bona mitza, badababah." My viewing of the classic 6-hour "The Best of Youth" was hampered in parts by this trait, but maybe if I watched it again, I could accept it, or at least look past it.