Il compleanno

This is an overlong Italian soap opera about two fortyish married couples sharing a beautiful beach home for the summer; when the long-absent 18-year-old son of husband #1 shows up, husband #2 falls hard. All sorts of complications might arise, but the film just flounders around for almost two hours, until it finally ends in (you guessed it!) tragedy. (All those shots emphasizing husband #1's wedding ring were a dead giveaway that this would end in tears.) There's some nice scenery, a little eye-candy, and lots of talking and eating and strolling on the beach. This movie offers a long, slow haul to a limp, contrived finish.

Forgetting its homosexual subject matter for a moment, no one commenting on this film seems to critique it for content and execution. The gay audience pans it for it not being gay enough and out comes the gay card in accusing it of being homophobic, and I feel that the very positive comments are made only because it is gay themed. Anyway, the story was very thought-provoking, and it was dealt with in a very sober way, but in a way that was so slow paced and drawn out that it become boring by the second half of the film.

And part of the drawn-out aspects was the usual European arty scenes of sunsets, seagulls flying in front of clouds and brooding distance and close-up views of the waves. Every movie made in Italy has to be an Art House production with deep underlying meanings and this one is a prime example of that over blown propensity!

The movie was a modern tragedy and conveyed that very well, it was not a rainbow flying gay movie, but a human story that happened to involve homosexual feelings awakening in a married "straight" man - deal with it!

This would have been a very entertaining hour-long drama presentation, but as a full-length movie it detracted from its overall appeal.

I saw it as a sort of ladder . First - the cast - especcialy Maria de Madeiros and Massimo Poggio. Second - the opera show, as seed of the dramatic story, and, not the last, the summer house and the friendship portrait. A love story, forbidden, ambiguous and the development of story used by many films, maybe too many, from same gene. But its beauty remains obvious. A bitter story of desire, the character discovering the truth behind apparences, the consequence who, in some measure, you expect it. Touch of soap opera ? If you know the feelings of Matteo , you see this accusation as silly. But,maybe, for majority, it is present but far to be definitory and it can be perceived only as try to give to story some dramatic flavors . Short, a beautiful film. And this real counts.

Built on the theme of ill-fated love, this film merges modern cinema with opera and emerges with a hybrid which infuses the viewer with a morality tale under two hours duration. Emotional theatrics reveal the frayed and tattered mental state of these two couples as both attempt to keep the appearances of functional family ties and friendships. While some USA viewers may find the emotional intensity "over the top," I find it similar to the emotional intensity that was infused into American Western genre when it went Italian and added an operatic theme to the story-telling. While no bullets are flying in a "pulp fiction" sensational style, the emotional content and the poignant plot climax enliven a rather dull scenario of viewing yet another "Doing Time on Maple Drive" clone-film with subtitles.

Maybe it's because I'm Italian but this Italian film is absolutely brilliant. Anyone who says otherwise obviously doesn't get it based on what the various reviews here say. Nor is this film for the faint of heart or the weak of mind. It is stimulating, thoughtful, and very intense because you never know what will happen next, a true sign of a great film. It keeps you at the edge of your seat biting your fingernails. But any film that begins with a Wagner opera is nothing to sneeze at and if you don't get Wagner you won't get this film either. Visually, it is nothing less than stunning, in fact may very well be the most beautiful film I have ever seen. The eroticism is unprecedented, true art, done so perfect that I sat there with my mouth open because it never borders on the vulgar. The cast is sublime, just about the most perfect casting you can imagine.