La sapienza

People will call it pretentious, boring, and pointless. Of course they will. Of course. I fully understand this. The film is clearly not for everyone, but I loved it! The stunning imagery of architecture is breathtaking, it really is!

The stunning imagery had sold me to this film right away, but the rest of the film is great, as well. Although the film is very light on plot, the dialogue is quite interesting and intelligent (even though it isn't particularly realistic and natural). The characters talk and talk about their pasts, their lives, and their professions. The film went by very quickly, and felt shorter than it's 104 minute running time.

Overall, this is one of the best films of 2015 so far, by far.

This is an excellent film. I look forward to seeing it a second time as there is so much to absorb/think about. What is unique is that the director chose to not develop the plot in a traditional manner. It is somewhat of a cross between a drama and a documentary. The present day characters serve to help us understand what the director wants to convey. The rogerebert.com review and an article and review on the New York Times site are useful to read before watching the film.

La Sapienza is a film about having knowledge about the past and the present, about people and relationships, and places to achieve a better, satisfying life. It is not accident that it is about knowledge as the Italian word Sapienza derives from the Italian verb sapere, to know.

Extremely different reactions to "La Sapienza" reflect differences in temperament. Negative criticism tends to remark the film's arty pretension, lack of plot, and pointlessness. It is easy to see why someone might react in this way, because Eugene Green's movies are different from everything else on offer, including so-called art-house films. To say that his characters do not talk as real people talk is exactly right, given that Green's characters speak in the declamatory Baroque style, a style which he has been teaching these past forty years. This mode of speech is so far removed from our daily discourse that it sounds like it comes from Mars. And that's the intention. It forces one to pay attention. It takes time and patience to get used to such talk, but after a little, the unusual diction begins to make sense: it fits Green's symmetrical compositions of objects in space and the stillness that permeates all his films.

As to pretentiousness, no. Green is, if anything, modest in his insistence that there is another way, albeit one that appears wildly impractical in our materialistic present. True, his characters incarnate types that reflect ideas which he has been developing, especially since 2001, in print and on film. True, to embody an idea is to be a bit odd. Certainly this approach takes us off the beaten track. However, for those of a particular temperament, that's all to the good.

It is not the fault of an English-speaking audience, when they are unfamiliar with Green's ideas. He writes in French, as did Julian Green and Samuel Beckett. However, unlike these latter two, his books have yet to be translated from French into English.

Meanwhile, Green's movies aim for evocation. There are no car chases, no shootouts, no femme fatales, no sound-bite dialogues, no CGI, no enhanced sounds, all of which can be entertaining. Instead, there is a universe of the imagination and a particular sensibility that would have us put down our smart phones for a long moment, take a deep breath, look around, and 'regard' (recall that this word comes from French and there lies its meaning) the person sitting across from us. That is to say, to be in the moment, not becoming, but being. After all, 'becoming' will take care of itself. Being, on the other hand, is sometimes missed altogether.

Love is difficult enough in any language and art form, so layer a French film in a Swiss-Italian setting (Ticino is in southern Switzerland) with an architecture motif, and you have an insight into what makes it all work—light. La Sapienza will indeed make you wise if it doesn't confound you with its arty dialogue.

Most of the screenplay is poignantly presented with slow theatricality, sometimes as if the characters were in a documentary talking directly into the camera. But American-French writer-director Eugene Green brings powerful emotions out of his four principals even when they speak without an ounce of naturalism. Love is in the words aided by the light.

The middle-aged architect, Alexandre (Fabrizio Rongione) is visiting Ticino to study the work of 17th century Baroque architect Francesco Borromini and to be inspired. The charming Bernini would have been a better inspiration than the melancholic Borromini, but, hey, our architect captures a good vibe no matter.

His wife, Alienore (Christelle Prot), a group psychoanalyst, loves the introverted scholar even dispelling the overtures of a very young architect, Goffredo (Ludovico Succio), the purveyor of the light philosophy to her and her husband. Completing the foursome is Goffredo's pre-Raphaelite-like sister, Lavinia (Arianna Nastro), who gives Alienore more strength to love and live than she already has.

Architecture becomes more than enveloping space as it provides the angle of light to incite true love. Unsurprisingly, the loving brother and sister (close to too loving) have much to teach about the purity of love and the love of architecture. La Sapienza is a moving tone poem, albeit eccentric in dialogue and light on conflict.

In contrast with Noah Baumbach's comedy, While We're Young, which has a younger couple confounding the adults, La Sapienza is witty and accessible, entertaining and underplayed. A wise summer choice in a spectacular but droll European setting. Light even if it sounds heavy under my keystrokes.

... but at the end it let me cold according to the initial aesthetic and methaphoric espectatives.