Ginostra

I saw this movie at the Toronto Filmfest and had such high hopes... soon to be dashed. The plot is both confused and boring, leaving the audience incapable of identifying with the characters. The backdrop of an erupting volcano tries to give the film tension but merely confuses the storyline. Harvey Keitel manages to make some of the movie at least watchable but this movie rated high on the numb-bum-omiter... for a movie pegged at 135 mins it felt like 4 hours.

The whole audience was left in stunned silence at the end of the movie. When the Q and A started the director was asked "what were the evil nuns about? " he didn't seem to know what they were there for either... I'd like to think it was a nod to Monty Python ;-)

Will this be the most talked about movie on the year? Perhaps - as everyone will be trying to figure out what went wrong with the film!

I saw this movie @ it's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (2002) and I've got to say, it was the most talked about movie between my friends and I. We just had so many questions about what various pieces of the movie meant as we were all sure we had to be missing something. We concluded that no, we didn't miss anything - there just wasn't enough there to tie it all together.

The movie has a lot of beautiful shots of the Italian coast, and the island of Ginostra. I think the editors could have done a much better job of pulling everything together. Also, I just didn't feel any chemistry between Harry Kietel and Andie MacDowell who were playing husband and wife.

In Italy, in the Sicilian island of Ginostra, Matt Benson (Harvey Keitel) is a FBI agent assigned for the protection and investigation of Ettore Greco (Mattia de Martino), the son of Stefano Greco, a cooker of the Mafia executed with his family by one of the local boss. The boy witnessed the crime and Matt wants also to find out who has double-crossed him in the protection of the boy's father. This long story is very boring, having a confused screenplay without credibility. Who could imagine an experienced American agent, who does not speak Italian, bringing his family for a period of vacation in Mafia territory while performing an important investigation of a crime committed by one of the mobster boss? The great cast and the beautiful `sightseeing' of wonderful landscapes in the Italian islands and the gorgeous eyes and lips of Francesca Neri exhaustively showed by the director Manuel Pradal is not enough to make this movie attractive. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): ` O Vulcão Ginostra' (` The Volcano Ginostra')

There is little to add to the other comments about this lengthy bore with its handsome images of an erupting volcano and lovely villas, its bad continuity, lack of chemistry between MacDowell and Keitel, generally wooden or uncoordinated acting, meandering, incomprehensible plot with an illogical set up (FBI man takes wife and kid to a dangerous assignment) and its preposterously heroic 11-year-old boy (let's not be too hard on newcomer Mattia De Martino: he does his best to impersonate a tough, angry kid; his acting is more convincing than Keitel's). I do want to mention something that drew me to rent the DVD besides the combination of Keitel, Harry Dean, and Asia Argento, and the fact that Pradal's first (and previous) film, 'Marie baie des anges' (1997) is haunting and evocative and original and 'stunningly beautiful' (Stephen Holden, NYTimes). This is the fact that Tonino Benacquista worked on the screenplay. Benaquista has been a fantastic collaborator with Jacques Audiard on 'Sur mes lèvres' ('Read My Lips') and 'De battre mon coeur s'est arreté' ('The Beat My Heart Skipped'). Well, Benacquista's talents did not help here any more than anybody else's. His participation may have been limited. He is more permanently listed on Pradal's subsequent (2006) 'Un crime'('A Crime'), which has gotten higher marks, and I'm curious to see that. Apparently it has just come out in a US DVD (July 2009) so it will eventually be available for rental. I haven't given up, because 'Marie baie des anges' is an experience one can go back to again and again. If Pradal could make that, he ought to be able to make another good film.

Dramas over two hours in length generally fall into two camps - they either have an epic story to tell, full of deep characterisations, complex plots and stunning backdrops, or they stink. Ginostra falls with aplomb into the latter category.

Never has so little happened of such little note in such a long time. If this were not bad enough, never have actors of the calibre of Harvey Keitel and Andie MacDowell delivered such clunky dialogue with such haste and apparent lack of skillful direction or editing.

The likes of Osment and Radcliffe have little to worry about from Mattia De Martino, who plays the son of a chef to the mob who is his immediate family's sole survivor following a car bombing. Keitel is the FBI agent on the case and he and his wife MacDowell base themselves near the island of Ginostra, the site of the bombing, while he tries to pump the child for information.

There is some innuendo between Keitel and Francesca Neri, who plays the wife of the local officer chasing the mob, who in turn appears to fancy MacDowell. Nothing actually materialises, which is the film's major problem - it's quite miserable and very dull. Misery is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but with nothing else to grab hold of, it's all a bit much.