Um Coração para Sonhar

"Il cuore altrove" is a great film.

Great because it shows everyday life from extraordinary points of view.

Great because it tells about how ordinary people can do wonderful things, and shy people can be brave, in the name of love.

Great because it proves that you can put together a talented comic-cabaret actor (Neri Marcorè) and a showgirl (Vanessa Incontrada) and here it is: an unusual, but wonderful couple of actors for a surely unusual, but wonderful love story.

Great because it is able to convince you that very talented and experimented actors like Giancarlo Giannini or Giulio Bosetti are even more talented than you thought.

Great because it provides a touching insight of a town that everybody should be allowed to visit once in a lifetime.

Great because it makes you laugh and cry at the same time and very few films are still able to do it nowadays.

Even if, out of Italy, you won't be able to understand its spirit fully, please try to see it. You won't regret.

in the 30s, a clumsy 35 years old professor of latin and humanities moves to Bologna, under the pressure of his parents (very important tailors in Rome, who work for the pope! they're disappointed by son's devotion to studies and unskillness with practical things) hoping he would eventually find a wife and settle family, giving them an heir to their fortune.

he is a very sensible and well-educated person, yet a kinda stranger in the real world. students are at first surprised by his manners, but then start to like him and his way of teaching, motivated from personal passion for classics.

his life changes when he meets a very exuberant pretty woman, who likes to enjoy life. What can make these two persons who are exactly the opposite one of the other close to each other? Actually she is blind and our guy the only one, with his sensibility, who can stand by her..but the thing is obstacled both from her parents (who thinks a school professor could not afford to give her the life standards she is used to) and his (who do not accept the fact she is blind). And she seems to be still in love wiht her previous boyfriend. will they finally come together?

a swiss doctor is trying hard new techniques to give her back the sight. Will she finally see again? in that case, what will change in their relationship, given the fact that was her blindness itself to make her notice him?

funny the first half, very touching the second part.

Pupi Avati has made a big job, and Marcorè is astonishly good in the role.

Pupi Avati is one of the best current directors working in the Italian Cinema. He is an original. His stories are never boring and he has the talent to create a stir among his viewers.

There is a role reversal here. Nello, the young Latin and Greek professor, has never known love, nor has he pursued it before. He meets and falls in love with Angela, the rich society girl that is temporarily blind. Little does Nello knows what he is getting into. Angela wants a vendetta against the real love of her life, who has abandoned her, when she loses her sight, for another.

The irony of the story is that Nello, even though he can see, is in reality the blind one, and it is Angela, the blind one, who will go to extremes to use him until she achieves the revenge she wants, except that at one point, she comes to realize that Nello adores her, but it's too late because then all she wants is to go ahead with an operation that might restore her eyesight.

Neri Marcore, is perfect as Nello. He makes us believe he is the awkward and naive Nello. Giancarlo Giannini is Cesare, Nello's father, who cheats on his wife, shamelessly. Vanessa Incontrada is perhaps the weakest of the principals since it appears this is her first appearance in a film.

Pupi Avati delivers another film that is well crafted and makes one think.

This ostensibly simple but ultimately haunting tale of a virginal teacher in search of a soul mate of proportions equal to the Latin and Greek verses he teaches captures the essence of selfless love, so very rare in male film protagonists since the invention of the Spaghetti Western (also Italian!).

Bookworm Neri Marcore is sent from Rome to Bologna by father Giancarlo Giannini (who's tailor to the Pope and well-versed extramaritally) to learn something about the opposite sex. And learn his son does when he meets the beautiful Vanessa Incontrada at a dance for the blind. But blindness turns out to be more than meets the eye when Vanessa's previous life catches up with them both.

Marcore's subtle performance is reminiscent of Chaplin at his most engaging and Olivier at his most nuanced, with Marcore's smile leaving an imprint long after the screen fades to black.

If you enjoy lush European/Italian settings and fairy-tale stories, with poignant, but not unhappy endings, you'll enjoy this film. Beautiful setting, some "stereo-types" in characters, but suspend reality for a few hours and enjoy the tale of the MALE ugly-duckling who gets a chance to spend some time with his "swan" even though it's not meant to be forever.