Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

«The Consequences of Love» rises above typical films. It penetrates into your mind and thoughts. The mood and atmosphere of the film is created with the help of wonderful soundtrack. The title of the film promises a love story and a happy ending, a beautiful romantic picture with the elements of a thriller. But of what or for is this love, whether it is directed to a human being or to a thing. Strove for money, bean counter, self-composure and errors of person's priorities are in the center of this film. A hotel where the main character lives embodies our futile existence. We take risks when we're young and a wide range of prospects is ahead of us. But the price of an error is too high that we have to correct it during the rest of our lives. And whether we are able to take risks and overcome the consequences once again is still a question. «The Consequences of Love» impressed me in many aspects. The plot and the denouement are quite unpredictable. You follow every movement of the camera unable to take your eyes of the screen. Every character's motion is saturated with disappointment, lament and humility to the slow and suffocating pace of life. Once being a broker yearning for voluptuous and amoral living Titto looses the game and now has to follow the recurring routine of his existence that seems to become eternal. Unable to become the lord of this life Titto' s hopes for a "dolce vita" dashes in a fraction of a second. He turns into a machine unable to produce any positive emotion or impulsive action. Only fear keeps him. Nevertheless even this emotion becomes blunt in the end. Titto repays mafia for his mistake in the youth by transferring money to a Swiss bank once or twice in the week. This vicious circle doesn't have an end, being imprisoned in the hotel Titto turns into an aloof, morose and lifeless creature too tired to show any sighs of interest in the monotonous current of life.Indifference, vanity and loneliness become his friends. Only heroin enables him to dissolve and get rid of his constant condition of a dead man. A young waitress persistent in her attempts to attract Titto's attention and penetrate into his thoughts reimburses our character from his slumber. Being at first pessimistic on the account of love he makes decision to take risk once again in his life. But the slightest change makes Titto fist time an all the time sure that no one loved him and the life itself has never loved him. The only thing that Titto regrets and is certain about is his friendship with a man from his past. The film bewildered me with its smooth and even depiction of a man's life buried under strain of his own thoughts and inner incapability to surrender and at the same time to defeat this world. It is one of my favorite type of films – the film – mood that plunges you into the cluster of feelings, anticipations and torpor of someone's life and more vividly enables you to understand your own perception of the world and place among the others. The ending of this picture has won my deepest admiration. Being symbolic and metaphoric it has the most realistic and solely veritable version of a concluding phase of such people' lives. He would be buried under concrete over and over again in his vain attempt to cheat this world. Lacking «intelligence» he would be cheated by this world.

The opening shot is hypnotic, drawing you in. Into a world of strangeness and solemnity. A deep, Italian baritone-voiced narrator making the invite ever more enticing. Then:A middle-aged gentleman just sits in the hotel lounge, looking intelligent and distant, distinguished but also downright arrogant and rude. He never speaks to staff, or other guests, even, despite having been in residence for ten years.He does something, without fail every Wednesday - and a couple more things the same day, once a year.The sort of gentleman one could chance upon in any hotel, pretty well anywhere in the world. A poker-face of nothingness, smoking his life away, his concentration on his inner world only broken by the burned out cigarette stub. The excellent acting of Toni Servillo, coupled with the sublime direction of Paolo Sorrentino, employing a Kubrick style of slo-steadicam, with an ever sense of steady dread. Always compelling rather than propelling, the story unfolds with Servillo's character, Titta, as he leads this strictly regimented life until confronted by the stunning Sofia, the barmaid. She looks at him straight in his eye and states that she's made his bed, served him this and that, had always been polite and courteous for the three years she's worked there. And he's never had the decency to utter a single word to her. Instead of being nice back or even saying anything at all, we're aware that a flicker of something human has sparked within him. But, as the very title states, this lowering of his guard could very well be his downfall. What does, however inflame this film and raises it even higher are the occasional flurries of activity. Titta hardly does anything more than almost nothing (driving one block, or looking around - not buying, though - a shopping mall) is accompanied by very loud punk rock music. This is unsettling - is this a dream he's having? Does he yearn for the fast life? Are the people he meets from a past, productive life? Do the characters he encounters then have any relevance to him - and to his situation now? The scenes look very real; the mood and ambiance are definitely not.Moving on into the realms of more conventional crime drama, but still with a cool unease and an almost Memento meditative pace, the whole reveals lives and opportunities lost. Of redemptive longing and knowing one's own fate. This is an intelligent film that refuses to retread a potentially familiar path.If in the U.K, BBC4 shows it again, wrap yourself inside it, be enveloped by it. You'll want to watch all of it, not that you know why but you'll be glad that you did. It's only 90mins. I've seen The Consequences... four times now, and I never tire of it. The ending will have you quietly shocked and amazed, too.

Italian screenwriter and director Paolo Sorrentino's second feature film which he wrote, premiered In competition at the 57th Cannes International Film Festival in 2004, was shot on locations in Italy and is an Italian production which was produced by producers Domenico Procacci, Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima and Angelo Curti. It tells the story about a middle-aged man named Titta De Girolamo who has lived in a anonymous hotel in Switzerland during the last eight years. Titta is a well dressed and short-spoken man who has maintained an ice-cold facade for a long time and who spends his days at the hotel's bar and lobby where he distantly observes the personnel and the guests, but his life alters the day he unexpectedly allows himself to become interested in a young and attractive bartender named Sofia.Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino had made a number of short films before he in 2001 made his debut feature film "One Man Up" and he received international recognition three years later with his next narrative feature. Within the 100 passing minutes this piece of art lasts, times existence disappears and one's eyes is magnetically drawn towards Paolo Sorrentino's minimalistic vision of an esoteric character's monotone and ritualistic life at a hotel where colorful individuals live in a spiral of repetitive behavior. Through the protagonist's point of view, a reflective voice-over narration, sterling production design by Italian production designer Lino Fiorito, cinematography by Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and a great score by Italian composer Pasquale Catalano, Paolo Sorrentino depicts a refined study of character about a nostalgic and introvert 49-year-old man who against his own principles let's the light into his life at the moment he establishes communication with an accommodating woman who has spent two years trying to declare her existence to him. This fascinating play with perspectives which almost exclusively takes place at a hotel, becomes a distinct film experience much due to Paolo Sorrentino's characteristic use of close-ups, repetitions, slow-motion scenes, long takes and sequences with rapid editing where the music is impressively well calculated, and is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, quiet though intensifying continuity, cinematographic expertise, aesthetic depiction of an almost mechanical upper class milieu, synoptic screenplay, quick-witted dialog and the understated and convincing acting performances by Italian actor Toni Servillo and Italian actress Olivia Magnani. An existential drama, an unconventional love fable, a thriller, a neo-noir or a gangster drama, Paolo Sorrentino's genre mix is well-constructed and this ingenious work is inspiring cinematic creativity from the innovating opening scene to the stylized ending. A brilliant exercise of style and form where image, sound, movement, figure of speech and narration is sublimely incorporated.

A true masterpiece by Sorrentino and Tony Servillo demonstrates his exceptional acting ability as the cool, enigmatic Titta.Yet another example of a must see movie that the everyday person will not receive access, as the high street cinema chains are full of Hollywood funded nonsense. Fortunately I reside in the metropolis and amongst the privileged few who enjoy the choice the art-house cinema provides. I champion the day when cinema investment will be channelled into bespoke film screenings allowing choice for the masses and away from assembling penny sweet counters! Film of the year for me so far and yes I've seen a few....