Ils appellent ça l'été

Original, touching, interesting, post-modern, uneasy. A movie stepping outside the "typical" Italian industry, putting itself on top of contemporary European film-making. A film directed by an author in search of a new language, able to melt plot, characters, psychology, into the flesh of his actors, into a streaming of disturbing situations. You may hate it, but there's no doubt that this is one of those movie that hit the audience, changing the point of view on love and relationships (and on cinema too) of every viewer. There were so many questions spinning in my head after watching this movie: what should be the purpose of contemporary film-making? How far you can push yourself in telling a story? How can you translate into images a psychological pathology? Isabella Ferrari's performance (awarded with the best actress's prize at Rome Film Festival in 2012) is impressing and stunning. She put herself completely in the hands of the director, giving it all, reaching the audience with her desperation, her pain, her loneliness. The loneliness caused by an impossible love. The kind of love that destroys everything. That destroys lives.

Following a non-linear narrative method, and using flashbacks and different "time windows", the filmmaker Paolo Franchi analyzes in a very accomplice and almost " affectionate " not the destruction or construction of a love, but a love that seems different from models we know, far from the "happiness-at-all-costs" clichés but as real and intimate. The movie, exploring the sentimental life a modern and successful couple, is the chilling shot of a relationship in which love does not exist and will never exist . Dino and Anna are a picture-perfect couple, but the truth is different: the lack of sex, love, confidence, honesty hiding under this surface will face us with something that probably we are not ready to accept. A different way to love, full of tragedy and and pain, and a different way to "be together" that may seem arid, but makes them feel alive and fulfilled. In Dino and Anna's life the shattering of an absolute happiness against human and psychological limits is the strength, the engine, the true meaning : no need to be happy to be alive , you need to feel the blood flowing , to cry, to doubt. We may not agree, but that's it: it's not us, is their couple, is their relationship , and we can be spectators , never judges. Thanks to a flawless direction , an excellent script and actors painfully perfect , the film forces us to face the love (or, rather , the non- love) of Dino and Anna, and deal with our way of loving, with the compromises and the moment of loneliness. And sometimes makes us feel fragile and alone more than we think we are.

Paolo Franchi is one the most interesting directors working in Italy today. E la chiamano estate is a courageous and incredibly stylish film. It is explicit and intimate. Without a doubt one the best films released in Italy in the last few years. The film tries in a very honest way to address the issues of longing and desire and questions the frailties of the male sexual imagination. A man and woman are haunted by the past that lingers on. They cannot live together but they can't be apart as well. They float in a emotional wasteland trying to come to terms with their own desperation. The camera work is astonishing and Franchi's direction is absolutely brilliant. Don't believe the negative hype and watch it with your own eyes. Discover an Italian director that works against the grain of stereotypes.

Two words would suffice for this review if not for IMDb's rules to not publish articles with less than 10 lines of text: SIMPLY UNWATCHABLE. Being a movie buff I happen to see a lot of films, and here and there a bad one can slip in. But here we aren't talking simply about a bad movie. Forget the money, you'll be asking back for the time you've wasted watching this piece of trash. The film-maker should have realized that staring at a white wall for 3 months would have been more productive than making this. You'll have way more fun reading this review than watching this sorry excuse of a film... isn't that saying a whole lot? Don't even get me started on "actress" (yes, the brackets are absolutely necessary) Isabella Ferrari... why is she on video instead of, say, my grandma? I bet you she'd be more talented than Ferrari is (shame about that name being shared with the legendary super-cars maker), not a difficult task by all means of course. I hear the DVD is coming out soon, well don't you DARE making the mistake of renting it (I feel better knowing there's no chance anyone would even consider buying "E la chiamano estate" to add to their movie collection) and you'll thanks me later! Title means "And they call it summer", well I think a more apt title would have been "And they call this a movie?!". Do yourself and the films industry a favor: Avoid at all costs!!!

I saw the movie "E la chiamano estate", I was simply amazed and regretted the negative criticism it has received; you have to wonder why critics were so ruthless and not capable of aestethetic reading , why film has been distributed so bad and so rarefied, after two awards at Film Festival in Rome; why the main actress was booed and insulted during the ceremony; why it was not appreciated the effort and the commitment to design a research as that of Paolo Franchi. Acid comments, gossip, inferences have characterized the release of this film. Maybe one of the clearest evidence that Italy, at this moment ( we do hope just for this moment…) is a country traditionalist and deeply conservative, closed to new ideas, perched in Catholic thought hypocritally, condemning the diversity whatever it is , lacking a cultural scene open to experimentation, visual alternatives and other modes of production. Already that the film is a truly independent production, outside the grids of system RAI, the only network now able to produce in Italy. We're sorry for Paolo Franchi and his eyes authorial, for the audacious visual impact of the images, for the poetic drama of the bodies, for the beautiful and talented Isabella Ferrari, for all those who have believed in this project original, visionary and anti narrated. You should see it in order to judge