Colpo d'occhio

Sergio Rubini directed one of my favorite Italian films of the last few years "La Terra". This new venture however is a massive let down. The idea of an art critic determined to destroy an artist is, was and always will be a good idea for a dark thriller. Here the opportunities are wasted in a series of unconvincing moments promising a lot and delivering nothing.. Well photographed and with a Brian de Palmaish score by the great Pino Donaggio but at its very core a total emptiness. The script is constructed by the numbers but ignoring the most important aspect: the diabolical plan of the critic is told in snippets without ever going into it. The film falls in most of the traps that lowers the standards of the Italian cinema. A gratuitous naked scene by the beautiful Miss Puccini and a series of miscalculated moments that rob the film of any real tension or suspense. Instead it makes it a tedious uninteresting tale of two egos. Rubini has fun with his devilish monster and Riccardo Scamarcio proves that he has a lot to learn. His face becomes tiresome instead of compelling. We just don't believe any of it and as a consequence we don't care. The most interesting character is Claudio, the artist's best friend but ultimately the character is treated like a plot device without a dimension of his own. At a certain moment the critic claims that mediocre artists imitate and that great artists steal. What was doing Sergio Rubini here? Imitating or stealing?

In the worst acted-film that I have seen in the last few years, only from aesthetics comes something good. Good photography and nice spots, with some modern art as background. For the rest, the plot is hardly believable and the characters' behavior seems strange looking at the facts happening. Some scenes are clearly an excuse to show the main actors naked. The deploying of the love story is at soap-opera level, with some moments of embarrassing low level acting (why haven't they tried to improve them with some more "Ciaks"? Are the actors really so bad?). It seems that they were in an hurry to finish the movie, without the time to reach a decent level. Very disappointing!