Um Lugar Para os Amantes

To be honest, I am a fan of this type of Italian movie and I have been to the Villa in outside of florence where the opening was shot.There is a certain feeling for this type of Late 60's Italian movie that one has to feel good about. I adored the soundtrack and If anyone know of any disk that "Ella" sang that title song, Please let me know

A beginning entirely from the pen of Hollywood, with a Hollywood star and Hollywood sounds. Take a look at this Faye Dunaway if you want to know what was being talked about, or better still raved about, at the time. In terms of content, however, we are not in the American New World, but in old Italy and the director is also an old Italian. A late work for Vittorio De Sica and obviously another cinematic experiment. Neorealism meets New Hollywood? Not at all, most likely contemporary European. A dramatic romance, at least on paper, but in its realisation it's quite offbeat. Enter Marcelo Mastroianni, the contrast is complete. In the course of the film, the viewer is certainly also confused. No wonder with such an inconsistent tone. Love. Illness. Happiness. Misfortune. Hope, so far, so good. But then there's jazz droning, loads of bizarre scenes, overacting and, despite the exaggerated emotions, somehow undercooled melancholy. To the point, it gets silly in places and consistently erratic, which can be seen as a warning or a promise, depending on your expectations. You should leave them where they are anyway and just try to let the special atmosphere, the great images and the two icons work their magic. Dunaway and Mastroianni don't go together? Apparently they do, in real life they had an affair, one alongside their marriage. And in the film, well, one looks good, one plays well, in a way a complement. The chemistry was right, see the aforementioned gossip. I'm noticeably not quite as critical of the film as the public was at the time, because I could feel what I was seeing, not something special, but unusual, somehow intoxicating. I also really wanted to know how this hot-blooded love would end, or not. An interest in the film that the film first has to create.

Italian upper class environment in the 1960's: beautiful houses and interiors, women of course also and so well dressed but, as in Dolce Vita, bored and wont to indulge in ambiguous erotic games - exciting for some and decadent for others. Mastroianni and Dunaway meet in such a venue before the evening festivities begin and fall in love and escape to the mountains at Cortina. The director Vittorio De Sica keeps the film viewer at a distance by introducing a "third party", the breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery. Intense love and imminent death of one of the lovers is not an unusual story. Through the beautiful photography, the cool and tight directing of De Sica, one senses that the dangerous mountains will provide the ending. The acting does not drag you in willy-nilly to experience ardently the emotions but leaves you to decide how you would have acted in such a tragedy. Some might agree with the American critic Maltin who found it pseudo romantic slop, others with a European sensitivity may decide like the lovers or remain ambiguous, but definitely not unmoved by their own thinking and their own feelings.

This is an excellent movie. To focus only on whether Ms. Dunaway is able or not to "warm" (whatever that means) is pointless. Vittorio DeSicca provides an admirable portrait of late 60s Italy, and more broadly of the kind of moral tensions going on during the late 60s worldwide. Marcelo Mastroianni was playing pretty much himself on the screen, while Faye Dunaway is on the other extreme of her rendition of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, frail, ill, sad. To my mind this movie is a jewel of the Italian masters. The Italian cinema will later overplay these kinds of extreme situations of ailing lovers confronted with an awful fate, as in Anonimo Venezziano, and many others in the early 1970s, but Amanti stands on its own, not only because of the beautiful cinematography (the Alps and Italy at large), but also because of Ms. Dunaway rendition of the character.

I am so lucky and happy to finally have seen this rare film!!!! It's been released on DVD in Sweden!!!! It's been impossible to see this film. Has it been shown anywhere since its initial release in 1968?

The film was in that infamous book "50 Worst Films" by the Medved brothers. It's not bad at all, quite gripping actually if you like tragic romance on film. It's well made with good direction by de Sica and good acting by Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni.

It IS very much a European film from the 1960's. A bit too trendy for most and that means people will think it is dated. It's a nice document of its time. I do wonder why it wasn't a hit back then, since the film has two big stars and a well known director. Perhaps it's too stilted. I am a great Faye Dunaway fan so for me it was a HUGE pleasure to see this film. I also LOVE films from the sixties high on style.

It's strange that the plot is very similar to the huge hit Love Story from 1970, yet Amanti is completely forgotten. Maybe the story of two jetset people in luxurious environments became a bit tired after a while. The plot is rather thin with very little background explanation. The film also borrows a lot of elements from other films: two beautiful adults in a love affair (A Man and a Woman), a woman seeing shocking news on TV (Persona), beautiful decadent rich people (La Dolce Vita), rich people stealing in a shop (Breakfast at Tiffany's)...

Faye also reminds me of Monica Vitti walking around full of stylish angst in Antonioni movies. (Nothing wrong with that!) She even acts kooky like Vitti in some scenes! It's lovely to see Faye so relaxed on the screen. She seems to be genuinely enjoying herself and is absolutely luminous. Maybe it's because she fell in love with Marcello during filming. She gives a very sensitive performance as Julie.