A Casa dos Gerânios

I saw this movie at the Italian Film Festival in San Francisco on 11/14/04. It has not been released to theaters and I don't know when it will. Lina Wertmüller, the director, and the major male star of the film, F. Murray Abraham (of "Amadeus" fame) were present for Q&A after the movie. The film itself deals with a somewhat dysfunctional family, Sophia Loren in the role of the mother, Abraham plays the father, and their three grown children.

Everyone has problems. There's a lot of shouting and passionate arguing (must be an Italian thing) going on. The plot is simple and there's a happy end. It takes place at the beautiful Amalfi coast and is a joy to watch. Oddly enough, though, it was shot in English and dubbed into Italian. One would think it should be the other way around. If it ever gets released in the US, we will mostly likely see the original English version. Final note: Sophia Loren is AWESOME!

Saw this at the Chicago International Film Festival and what a disappointment!!! Some people walked out; the rest of us stayed and wondered "why"? Story was trite, stupid and predictable; Sophia and husband (F. Murray Abraham) have been estranged over some stupid argument about anchovies and vinegar. Their neurotic children are coming home to celebrate Granny's birthday. Lots of screaming, bad dialog and terrible dubbing. Sophia looks like Morticia Adams in a long black wig. F. Murray Abraham looks like he's impersonating Sophia of 30 years ago. What a waste of time, money and what were two very talented actors. I hope they were embarrassed by this!

I must admit I only saw 40 minutes of this movie (I walked out); I could not stomach a second longer. This was a trite American-style sitcom filmed on the Amalfi Coast, with stereotypical Italian Brooklyn characters displaced to Campania. Not one of all these characters with perfect teeth had anything to do with real Italians who live in Southern Campania, nor did the English-spoken plot have anything to do with real life anywhere in Italy. This, in addition to the egregious continuity errors, made this movie a huge disappointment for me. Had I stayed the full duration of it, I would have either had a hypertension fit or I would have ended up in a really bad mood. I doubt that the prognosticated happy ending would have done much to salvage the situation.