L'anniversaire de David

Movie opens with a melodramatic opera scene and the ending of the movie finishes likewise. So over the top that the tragedy at the end seemed too contrived and unrealistic. The sex the married Italian had with the tempting young man was made to seem like the worst thing possible and the guilt trip over what accidentally happened at the end would last a lifetime. Oh come on...give me a break. Total overreaction....totally unreal drama!!! Not interesting and not sexy.

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.

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.

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.

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.