Canone Inverso

The film is captivating, inspiring, and touching. The cinematography and sound track are awesome! It has an intriguing plot with good character development. The acting is superb. Hans Matheson definitely stole the screen with his character portrayal and good looks. He is the most handsome and captivating man! It's a shame that US audiences are not familiar with the movie at all.

I just saw this film at the Newport Beach Film Festival (CA, USA) and it really moved me. I decided to see it because Gabriel Byrne was in it, but I found a lot more to enjoy. Namely the three young actors chosen to play Jeno, Sophie, and David. They were fantastic, especially Hans Matheson (Jeno). I was captivated by each of them, by how well they conveyed love, fear, joy, and sadness throughout the film, often with just the expressions on their faces. Ennio Morricone provided his usual elegant score behind it all. And the scenery was beautiful, in a very Eastern European crumbly building kind of way.

Anyone who appreciates good music and good film should keep an eye out for this one. There are some minor plot flaws, some of the scenes border on schmaltzy, and they definitely shoot for the tear ducts at the end, but it's still worth watching.

Saw this at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2000, and this was the worst European movie I saw this year. It has a ridiculous plot, silly twists, English actors who portray in English characters that would speak Czech and German shot somewhere in the Czech Republic. The only time someone speaks the language they should is when a German soldier is shouting "get away from here!"... Has subtle yet very strange gay-erotic undertones - and that is between two characters that end up being brothers! - very uninspiring acting and very badly written characters. Some actors do not look their character's age and if you really try and create the geneology of this broken family - you would come to some very strange conclusions (I refer you to the fact that Jeno's mother has a second child when he is about 20 yet she looks not a day over 25, Sophie looks like 13 years old but married to a guy over 40 and Jeno meets her when he is about 18, Costanza was born in a concentration camp (?!) and in 1974 looks like 21 instead of over 30 and so on). This is an example of what happens when good talents try to create a film that would sell "internationally", i.e. will be sold under the American distribution system. You get a horrible muddled plot spoken i the wrong language and shot in the best/worst way Italian manure can be shot in. It is artistically for the ignorant who won't even notice that the Cannon Inverso is not truly an inversed canon.. Now how dumn is that?! Avoid unless you want to see beautiful shooting locations. The music is OK but gets the standard not-more-than-2-minutes-a-piece-please attitude. A shame to the amazing legacy of Italian film making.

By the beautiful novel by Paolo Maurensig. It is the story of a Steiner violin and of his young owner Jeno Varga. It's a romantic drama filmed in Praha. Wonderful good music by Claude Debussy... I really enjoyed this film. Oh, by the way, Paolo Maurensig is from Udine, my town, in Italy...

I saw this movie with a large group of Jewish Film Festival Patrons and the

overall impression of everyone I spoke to was overwhelmingly positive.

Regardless of age or gender, this film touches and makes one feel truly moved. The performances were outstanding throughout the film. The actor who

portrayed Jeno Varga was inspirational. The actor who played Sofie Levy was

luminously beautiful. The film itself was filled with interesting plot twists and a interesting "mystery." The culmination was fulfilling and inspirational. The film also had great cinematography. While this was not a "perfect" film and one

could point out "flaws" in the ages or some details of the film, none of that distracts from this WONDERFUL film. For ANYONE (Jew, non-Jew, male,

female, young or old) wanting to see a genuinely touching and inspirational film about music, life, love, and a bit of everything, see Canone Inverso, a really delightful film.