Renzo e Lucia

I was mesmerized by this movie, it's SOOO beautiful! and although it needs TWO CD's because of its length, it's so very well done and compelling that seems to be too short.

One would like for the story to go on and on! I should feel ashamed of myself, since I decided to pick up this film at the Dante Alighieri Mediateca --Italian language school in Buenos Aires-- for the only reason that it was so long and therefore it could've helped me with my studies of the Italian language --I didn't have the slightest idea about the contents of this film-- but from the opening sequence...Wow! I was hooked to the bitter end.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The end isn't bitter at all, on the contrary! if I could find a weak point in this movie the end would be it. I think that maybe the director thought that the story, being so dark, needed an uplifted ending, sort of a 60s Doris Day ending, right? And from my point of view, it threw away all the misery that was being so painfully worked out so masterfully throughout the whole movie. Pity. With and ending respectful of the movie contents, this could have been a true masterpiece. But then, nobody's perfect!

As the director Francesca Archibugi said, Renzo e Lucia is not a reproduction of Manzoni's novel, but "one of the many possible movies that are present in I Promessi Sposi'. This one focuses on how the protagonists fall in love. Not only love, but also hate, envy, rage, piety and forgiveness are powerfully depicted in the movie, especially through the eyes of the characters. Among the many significant characters who appear only very briefly, the most intense is certainly the Signora di Monza with her proud folly, while the mother who says goodbye to her daughter just died from the plague seemed to me less pitiful. The passion and pathos of the story are beautifully resolved for the protagonists in the last scenes, where all the events become a tale told by Lucia to her and Renzo's children. Propio beo el finae! Sceneries and costumes are accurately reconstructed and faithful to the atmosphere of the novel; colours and sounds are willingly minimized, and the language seems almost poor: as a result, what stands out is the great expressiveness of the actors and the chemistry between the two young protagonists. Cast among high-school students of the region where the novel is actually set, the 16-year-old female protagonist is at her first appearance. A brave choice, but not the only one, in fact Renzo e Lucia was filmed in summer 2002, though no contract had been signed yet with Mediaset, which in the end bought the movie and broadcast it in January 2004. Manco mae.