Uma Viagem Chamada Amor

I saw this film last night. The scene's involving Sibilla Alaramo's youth were the best: her mother's madness and the brutal rape she was forced to endure at the hands of her future husband. Sibilla was, in Italy, a controversial novelist who challenged the paternalism of her day. That she had sexual relations with men other than her husband is something that Dino Campana cannot really forgive her for. His madness, though real, comes across as a bit self-indulgent. She seems the stronger, more depthful person: in love with a talented madman; having to survive as an independent women when this idea was frowned upon (it still is, to some extent).

It is hard to see a film, where everything is tragic, cruel and the director abuses of sex scenes. The argument could be interesting, even a real one, but the film only discharges suffering, unhappy facts, tough relationship between a man and a woman. Regarding sex scenes one may guess that the director wanted to show them to demonstrate the cruelty of the man, but not all in our lives is misery and misunderstanding. In any case, this film failed to balance the scenes and went in one direction.

The movie is about the ardent love story between the brilliant poet Dino Campana and the well known writer Sibilla Aleramo.

The Cultural background and atmosphere is the beginning of the 20th century with its revolutionary content relating sentimental life, human relationships, the new attitude of women and men, the refusal of the so called conformism and so on. And from this point of view I got the impression that the movie succeeded.

What I did not appreciate is the description of the development of the two main characters' love. As a matter of fact there is no description or explanation of what happened to Sibilla Aleramo's or Dino Campana's mind, heart, what where their reflections. You see the story of their strong love, but you do not understand the deep motivation of this passion, you feel you remain of the surface...

I think the movie could have been better.

The intense love story between the writer Sibilla Aleramo and the amazing poet Dino Campana: the social and psychological problems of the second one, but also his genius, make the story difficult, with continuous fights between the lovers, and with the effort of accepting the complexity of the world from a complex mind.

The movie in reality, is not a masterpiece: I think that some scenes are too full of pathos and this risks to reduce the good tension. But Campana Is a gigantic poet and so I think also that they are important film that talk about his life and art. Waiting for a better movie about him (and about Sibilla) we can watch this without too many expectations, and simply living an emotional, tragical, story between love and madness.

Could you imagine Michele Placido -the famous actor of "LA PIOVRA", a succesfull mafia TV serie- shooting a film about a poet's life, well this is the case and the result is remarkable.

Placido decided bravely to use a non commercial theme and describe deeply the life of an early 20th century poet, considered as a genius by all his colleagues. He is well acted by Stefano Accorsi, one of the latest generation Italian actors, well known after the succesfull blockbuster: L'Ultimo Bacio; he has a discontinuous and peaceless love story with Laura Morante, who in the film is a "well" known high class lady in the poetry male circles. The relation is well far to be a quiet one also because he starts to have more and more internal conflicts with himself. Laura Morante is splendid in her role, a nice middle age lady who has an unforgettable past with a family that finally she leaves to follow inconditionally his Poet friend. The film is well located in the Italy of those years and the atmosphere is perfect. The story can not finish in a different way than in a mental hospital.

Michele Placido seems to debate with us about the real meaning of poetry (or more in general arts) and the difficulties for a Poet (or an art man) to see life as everybody does in a standard way. However the film has certain moments where you can notice a lack of continuity in the story but the overall result is good.

Rating: 6/10