Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Have you ever wondered what your life would look like to a stranger looking in? If you were able to magically remove yourself and look at your "everyday", would there be insight to be had? Many of us allow life to pass us by. We do not demand enough, we do not strive enough, we do not mold what we have to the best of what it could be. This film compels you to question yourself, to appreciate more and not take things for granted, because our todays soon become our tomorrows and we do not want to be left with any regrets and what ifs.The film is very real. I felt engaged, I felt involved, and at the end, I felt serene. This is the calibre of film that film-goers live for.

This movie would even appeal to non-drama goers with it's mysterious jumps into the past. It deals with the struggles of a young mid-class family trying to make ends and their passion meet. Along comes a stranger (an older gentlemen), with problems of his own, who forces the heroine to change her approach on life and (PERHAPS A SPOILER) to realize that the life she has been given is by no means misfortunate, perhaps just a bit unfulfilled... This elderly gentlemen, in a state of loss, comes across this couples life, not knowing who he is and where he should go to. The heroine's husband having a soft heart and not wanting to just leave him on the streets decides to bring him into their home.

I saw the movie in original Italian. It must be said that the acting and interpretation is most heavily polluted by the TV-generated trend to speak in a severely muffled voice, not moving lips, straining tones, as emerged in the "That's real life"-productions and "Let's-raise-our audience-with-a-few-tears"-screen-playwriting. The late Massimo Girotti towers upon the other characters for intensity, clarity of expression and intellectual honesty. The movie has some good hints, but (as in another comment before mine) it lacks a focal point and dribbles away in many plot-lets of lesser and lesser relevance, another trend dragged in from the TV productions, well known to Italians. A few drops in style could be spared to the public, such as the patisserie drag (Charm and aesthetics of cooking plus sensual payload of sweets, see Chocolat, Babette's lunch, Vatel etc.) Hammam and the Fairies are definitely more truthful, seems that Ozpetek has learned the tune of Italy in the early 2000s and is humming along... I'll give him a last chance though...

I believe that in this universe, all possible combination of events already exist, just waiting to be perceived by an appropriately 'tuned' entity like a brain. In this view, time itself does not exist, but is just an illusion created by the limited perceptive 'bandwidth' of the tuner.So far, only people in extreme mental conditions like trance, epilepsy, yogic gurus, hallucinogenics and the near-dead are speculated to experience this 'timelessness' of the true reality. It was impossible for a 'normal' person on an ordinary day to experience this.Or so I thought, until I saw this movie. Cinematic ally, the director and cinematographer has pulled off a miracle in the way he has conveyed this profound concept of the timeless universe of interlocking patterns of events!In particular, the scene where the old man Simone/davide asks Giovanna for a dance, and as the camera pans across the window frame, the viewer is transported back and forth in time almost as in a trance, with the incredible music adding to this experience. It dissolved all character and behavioral boundaries of past, present, future, mater/student, father/daughter, lover/lover... This scene brought torrents of tears to my eyes, and I must've rewound and replayed it 30 times in one sitting...Incredible movie.I disagree with the characterizing of this movie as 'creamy romance' It is in fact a very hard edged, cerebral movie, filled with great illustrations of some of the mysteries of scientific concepts like time, space, causality etc