El Otro Lado Del Amor

While this movie has some good moments, I found both the plot and the pace of the movie uneven to the point where I was not engaged in the movie for most of the time. The lead actor is talented, so talented and so convincing as the sweet, lonely, and socially awkward 35 year-old he plays - at points in the movie - you feel bored of him and tired of his introversion and immersion in ancient poetry. The leading lady, while beautiful, does not deliver a convincing performance. That role required an actor with a broader range and she falls flat. There are, however, scenes that made me laugh aloud and all of them featured the legendary Giancarlo Giannini.

"Incantato (Il Cuore altrove)" is a beautiful looking film with an odd set-up and story line.

It's set in the Northern Italy of pre-World War II as that's about the last point one could have such naive characters, particularly the central man, a 35-year-old virgin classics teacher whose idea of love is what he's learned from the Latin poets.

He is a misfit everywhere - from his earthy family of Papal tailors, from beloved choruses because he sings too loudly, from his boarding housemates and their assignations, from the school administration about curriculum, and especially from women. He is under orders from his father, Giancarlo Giannini (in a virtual cameo whose comically vulgar language is not fully translated in the English subtitles), to get laid and get married, not with the same woman, so that he can follow dad's lifestyle in business, marriage and affairs.

He becomes infatuated with first one then another inappropriate woman, for opposite reasons. While he is sweet, and he wins over his students and all who he comes in contact with and his improbable courtships are charming to a point, but as we feel more and more sorry for him as we hope he won't but are sure he will end up in heart break, the movie just gets too unreservedly bittersweet.

The ending is simply a head-scratcher. The movie titles certainly don't help -- the original Italian title translates as "The Found Heart," while the U.S. title translates as "Enchanted" and neither is helpful to interpretation. (One member of the audience came to the movie not realizing it would be the same film she had already seen under the former title.)

The subtitles are not only annoyingly white on white, but put up both parts of a conversation at the same time.

As do other movies of Pupi Avati, Il cuore altrove (the heart elsewhere) deals with people searching for home – home meaning here not only a certain place on the geographical map but also in society and in the emotional landscape within.

A not so young man is sent from Rome to Bolognia with a clearly defined task: To find a woman who will produce an heir. He dutifully sets about to fulfill this task and also gets started in his job as a teacher of Latin and ancient Greek in a high school. He clearly is a misfit – and what's worse: a cultured one - who lives in a world of his own. As Avati explains in an interview on the DVD: He is one of those guys who always sing either too loud or too low – he will never make it into a choir (meaning any choir – this might serve as an explanation for the ending an other reviewer described as a head-scratcher).

At a dance for the blind in a monastery the not so young man meets a young, beautiful and glamorous woman – played convincingly by a Julia Roberts clone. He immediately falls in love with her and she, a temperamental and fickle soul, uses him in turn in an attempt to take revenge at the fiancé who jilted her after she lost her eyesight. The man is hell bent on marrying the woman who, as a dentist's daughter firmly integrated into Bologna's high society, seems to stand socially above him, disregarding all the sensible and well intentioned attempts to deter him. His is an absolutely quixotic enterprise that is bound to fail.

This short synopsis does not illustrate enough the kind hearted approach the director takes towards all the concerned characters and the mellow, consoling atmosphere created by the excellent cinematography and the backdating of the story to the first half of the 20th century. The story has a tragic ending but does not leave the main character without hope (but neither with a home). Very touching is the scene between him and his pupils as he tells them that he cannot stay on in Bologna (because of his delusion). Stay on, we will take care of you, they plead, and it really feels like it is meant that they will adopt him collectively. It struck me as being a typical reaction of young people who, with the innocence of their youth, think they can really improve the world and make a difference.

Once again in this movie Avati proves himself to be something of a master of unintentional cruelty – he really has a keen eye for the mechanics of the mind and the interaction between different people – and the mess they are bound to get into. In this aspect I detect a resemblance with the work of Woody Allen.

Il cuore altrove certainly isn't a movie for everybody's taste but in any case a rewarding experience with many funny and tragic moments.

"Il cuore altrove" is a great film.

Great because it shows everyday life from extraordinary points of view.

Great because it tells about how ordinary people can do wonderful things, and shy people can be brave, in the name of love.

Great because it proves that you can put together a talented comic-cabaret actor (Neri Marcorè) and a showgirl (Vanessa Incontrada) and here it is: an unusual, but wonderful couple of actors for a surely unusual, but wonderful love story.

Great because it is able to convince you that very talented and experimented actors like Giancarlo Giannini or Giulio Bosetti are even more talented than you thought.

Great because it provides a touching insight of a town that everybody should be allowed to visit once in a lifetime.

Great because it makes you laugh and cry at the same time and very few films are still able to do it nowadays.

Even if, out of Italy, you won't be able to understand its spirit fully, please try to see it. You won't regret.

This ostensibly simple but ultimately haunting tale of a virginal teacher in search of a soul mate of proportions equal to the Latin and Greek verses he teaches captures the essence of selfless love, so very rare in male film protagonists since the invention of the Spaghetti Western (also Italian!).

Bookworm Neri Marcore is sent from Rome to Bologna by father Giancarlo Giannini (who's tailor to the Pope and well-versed extramaritally) to learn something about the opposite sex. And learn his son does when he meets the beautiful Vanessa Incontrada at a dance for the blind. But blindness turns out to be more than meets the eye when Vanessa's previous life catches up with them both.

Marcore's subtle performance is reminiscent of Chaplin at his most engaging and Olivier at his most nuanced, with Marcore's smile leaving an imprint long after the screen fades to black.