Title: Facing Windows
Release Date: 2004-04-10
Genres: Art House & International, Drama
High essence:
"Instead of encasing te characters in a Hitchcockian murder mystery, the movie, written by Mr Ozpetek with Gianni Romoli, compares the possible lovers' fantasies to an older romantic story that slowly comes into focus from clues dropped by a mysterious octogenerian (Massimo Girotti), who calls himself Simone but has otherwise lost his memory.""Emotionally and sexually impatient with the kindly, harassed Filippo, Giovanna works as inspector in a chicken packaging plant, gazes out her kitchen window at a handsome neighbor across the street, feels too old to dare her dream of being a pastry chef, and supplements income by selling cakes to Irene's pub."
"Eventually, Giovanna and Lorenzo discover that the old man is a concentration camp survivor named Davide, and that Simone was his secret lover before the Nazis swooped down on the Italian Jews in Rome."
"Let's put it this way: When an amnesiac recovers his memory at just the right time, when he turns out to be a world-renowned pastry chef and when the woman who has cared for him also wants to be a pastry chef, you know you're not in a genre called neorealism."
Medium essence:
Stephen Holden:- The man calling himself Simone enters Giovanna's life when her husband, Filippo (Filippo Nigro), a sometime auto mechanic reduced to working night shifts pumping gas, takes pity on him and brings him into their home after he is found wandering the streets looking for help.
- In the close-ups of Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who plays Giovanna, an unhappily married 29-year-old mother of two, and Raoul Bova as Lorenzo, the bachelor bank manager across the way, the camera swoons over two faces of luminous beauty and sensitivity.
- Instead of encasing te characters in a Hitchcockian murder mystery, the movie, written by Mr Ozpetek with Gianni Romoli, compares the possible lovers' fantasies to an older romantic story that slowly comes into focus from clues dropped by a mysterious octogenerian (Massimo Girotti), who calls himself Simone but has otherwise lost his memory.
Donald J. Levit:
- Emotionally and sexually impatient with the kindly, harassed Filippo, Giovanna works as inspector in a chicken packaging plant, gazes out her kitchen window at a handsome neighbor across the street, feels too old to dare her dream of being a pastry chef, and supplements income by selling cakes to Irene's pub.
- The newcomer displays a thorough knowledge of baking and slowly recalls bits and pieces of a past, but wanders away one evening and is found with the help of Lorenzo (Raoul Bova).
- The film is dedicated to Girotti, who passed away in January 2003, before his posthumous David Award as Best Actor, Italy's Oscar and ironically his single nomination in a hundred-film career that began in 1939 and included work with Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica and Bertollucci.
Kevin Lally:
- Eventually, Giovanna and Lorenzo discover that the old man is a concentration camp survivor named Davide, and that Simone was his secret lover before the Nazis swooped down on the Italian Jews in Rome.
- Gianni Romoli and director Ferzan Ozpetek's screenplay tries to make these two story threads equivalent, but one is a question of life and death on a big canvas, and the other is the stuff of TV soap operas.
- Oztepek, a Turk who's been working in Italy since 1978, first broke through in 1997 with Steam--The Turkish Bath, a Turkish/Italian tale that found success in the gay movie market, and solidified his gay audience with 2001's His Secret Life.
Stephen Hunter:
- Let's put it this way: When an amnesiac recovers his memory at just the right time, when he turns out to be a world-renowned pastry chef and when the woman who has cared for him also wants to be a pastry chef, you know you're not in a genre called neorealism.
- Facing Windows (106 minutes, at the Cineplex Odeon Dupont Circle) is Check us out and see the difference Brookfield Homes, where design is the difference.
- But soft-touch hubby Filippo (Filippo Nigro) insists upon bringing the old guy home, and his wife, Giovanna, has to care for him.
Low essence:
Stephen Holden:- STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: June 18, 2004 acing Windows, a lush, surreally flavored immersion in voyeurism and romantic dreams, muses on many of the same themes as Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo, but from a more conventional emotional perspective.
- The man calling himself Simone enters Giovanna's life when her husband, Filippo (Filippo Nigro), a sometime auto mechanic reduced to working night shifts pumping gas, takes pity on him and brings him into their home after he is found wandering the streets looking for help.
- Giovanna, who dreams of being a pastry chef, loathes her work as an accountant in a poultry factory and angrily harangues Filippo for not being able to hold a job for long.
- An introductory flashback, set in 1943 and fleshed out only at the end, shows the youthful Simone (Massimo Poggio) working in a dingy bakery.
- FACING WINDOWS Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek; written (in Italian, with English subtitles) by Gianni Romoli and Mr Ozpet; Coricelli; edited by Pazio Guerra; Andrea Crisanti; produced by Tilde Privatization Be Allowed?
- In the close-ups of Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who plays Giovanna, an unhappily married 29-year-old mother of two, and Raoul Bova as Lorenzo, the bachelor bank manager across the way, the camera swoons over two faces of luminous beauty and sensitivity.
- Instead of encasing te characters in a Hitchcockian murder mystery, the movie, written by Mr Ozpetek with Gianni Romoli, compares the possible lovers' fantasies to an older romantic story that slowly comes into focus from clues dropped by a mysterious octogenerian (Massimo Girotti), who calls himself Simone but has otherwise lost his memory.
Donald J. Levit:
- Emotionally and sexually impatient with the kindly, harassed Filippo, Giovanna works as inspector in a chicken packaging plant, gazes out her kitchen window at a handsome neighbor across the street, feels too old to dare her dream of being a pastry chef, and supplements income by selling cakes to Irene's pub.
- The newcomer displays a thorough knowledge of baking and slowly recalls bits and pieces of a past, but wanders away one evening and is found with the help of Lorenzo (Raoul Bova).
- The film is dedicated to Girotti, who passed away in January 2003, before his posthumous David Award as Best Actor, Italy's Oscar and ironically his single nomination in a hundred-film career that began in 1939 and included work with Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica and Bertollucci.
- Winner of prestigious awards in its home country and elsewhere, Ferzan Ozpetek's Facing Windows / La finestra di fronte is a case study of a movie that opens well enough, promises much, changes horses in midstream, and sinks.
- In 1943, a grim young baker struggles with another, knifes him and flees into dark, wet cobblestone alleyways, leaving a bloody handprint that fades in the sunlight of now twenty-first century Rome .
- Crossing a bridge in what is obviously habitual petty squabbioro) and Filippo (F spot an elderly man (Massimo Girotti), lost and openly brandishing a wad of bills.
- A doting father but henpecked and underemployed, the husband insists on bringing the mild stranger home to their flat, where the dazed man talks little and remembers less, only that, as he reveals to the couples daughter, he is Simone.
Kevin Lally:
- Eventually, Giovanna and Lorenzo discover that the old man is a concentration camp survivor named Davide, and that Simone was his secret lover before the Nazis swooped down on the Italian Jews in Rome.
- Gianni Romoli and director Ferzan Ozpetek's screenplay tries to make these two story threads equivalent, but one is a question of life and death on a big canvas, and the other is the stuff of TV soap operas.
- Both actors (along with the film) won top honors at the David Di Donatello Awards, Italy's Oscars, but Girotti's triumph was posthumous--he died in January 2003, before the film's successful Italian release.
- Oztepek, a Turk who's been working in Italy since 1978, first broke through in 1997 with Steam--The Turkish Bath, a Turkish/Italian tale that found success in the gay movie market, and solidified his gay audience with 2001's His Secret Life.
- Giovanna plans to bring Simone back to the police station after dropping off the cakes and pies she bakes for a local pub to earn extra cash, but the old man wanders off while she's on her errand.
Stephen Hunter:
- Let's put it this way: When an amnesiac recovers his memory at just the right time, when he turns out to be a world-renowned pastry chef and when the woman who has cared for him also wants to be a pastry chef, you know you're not in a genre called neorealism.
- Facing Windows (106 minutes, at the Cineplex Odeon Dupont Circle) is Check us out and see the difference Brookfield Homes, where design is the difference.
- But soft-touch hubby Filippo (Filippo Nigro) insists upon bringing the old guy home, and his wife, Giovanna, has to care for him.
Source:
http://www.reeltalkreviews.com/browse/viewitem.asp?type=review&id=876
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2004/07/16/AR2005033114945.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/movies/18WIND.html?ex=1119067200&en=544308e25d37fa48&ei=5083&partner=Rotten Tomatoes
http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/reviews/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000695451