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.

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

How this picture earned 89 on the Rotten Tomatoes scale, I will never know. Except for some routine tourist videos of Italy, there is nothing to recommend here. The characters are stand-ins for ideas. The parts are not so much acted as spoken. The actors are leaden except when they are smiling, which they rarely do, and then they are leaden and smiling. There is a ton of clap-trap dialogue about light, rooms, specters, sacrifice, becoming an opposite, and the like. Death plays a part.

I gather that architecture is a metaphor here for film making. An architect's room is a director's camera ("camera" is the Italian word for "room," of course). Light enters both. The architect protagonist's musings about Borromini and Bellini, and the like, are stand-ins for the director's musings about making movies. I am afraid that none of this worked for me. The movie failed to engage, much less to enlighten.

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.

La Sapienza (2014) is a French movie, written and directed by Eugène Green. (Note that Green, despite the accent over the e in his name, is American, not French.)

This movie doesn't fit into a pattern. It's about alienation between husband and wife, it's about Italian Baroque architecture, and it's about love. The problem in reviewing the film is that all these matters are presented to us in very unusual ways.

The person who introduced the movie pointed out the influence of Bresson on Green's work. I thought that it was closer to Antonioni or possibly Ozu. Actually, it's not that close to any other director whose films I've seen.

Fabrizio Rongione portrays Alexandre Schmidt, an architect at the height of success. However, he's burned out, especially because his plan for a model housing unit in a rural village is met with a counter proposal to cement everything over and just put in windowsills with flower pots on them.

His wife, Aliénor (Christelle Prot Landman) says she's a "psychologist, psychoanalyst, and sociologist." She appears to work for a nonprofit organization (I think) that cares about community well being. (There's a short scene where she's describing the wretched circumstances in an--I believe--Algerian neighborhood, and she's met with rude humor rather than understanding.)

It's had to tell whether Alexandre and Aliénor still love one another. In their scenes together, they stare at the camera, not at each other, and barely talk.

Alexandre decides to travel to Italy to revive his interest in the Baroque Italian architect Borromini. Aliénor travels with him. In Italy, they meet a brother and sister: Goffredo (Ludovico Succio) and Lavinia (Arianna Nastro). Goffredo wants to become an architect. Lavinia suffers from a "neuologic disorder." (Never specified, and not clear from the plot.)

In a surprise turn of events, Aliénor stays behind to be with Lavinia, and Alexandre travels with Goffredo to Rome to observe Borromini's work.

I can't reveal more of the plot. What I can do is say that this is a quiet film, but never boring. There's no violence, no sex, and no bizarre occurrences. One scene appears to flow into the next almost seamlessly. It's not a good movie if you want action, but it will work if you relax and watch the plot of the film unfold.

I was particularly impressed by the acting of Christelle Prot Landman, an actress whose work I've never seen before. She has a quiet presence that fits the part perfectly. She reminds me of Fannie Ardant in the movie Colonel Chabert. When asked what she is like, the answer is "Superb."

We saw this movie at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in Rochester's George Eastman Museum. It won't work as well on a small screen--because of the architecture--but it's worth seeing in any way you can. It's different, and it's fascinating.