La espera

Anna's house is in mourning. As the mirrors are covered and the doors a locked, an unexpected guest walks through the front door. It's Jeanne, the girlfriend of her son, who had arrived to spend the Easter with him and his family. Seeing the opportunity to take her mind of her sadness Anna embraces Jeanne with all hear heart. But as the days go by, and her son does not appear, will she be able to tell Jeanne the terrible truth?

Piero Messina – assistant director of the Italian Oscar winner Great Beauty, creates a movie full of symbolism. With every frame holding some sort of meaning, the film is beautiful and deep, like the Sicilian lake on the border of which the story takes place.

THE WAIT is quite a cinematic journey for a small film, which is basically focused on two performances. Playing with themes of resurrection, the movie unravels to us the picture of grief, and by the end it will stand before us, truly exposed, just like unveiled statue of Virgin Mary in the final scenes.

Juliette Binoche is a great performer and she has an interesting role here. Her Anna is deeply damaged but climbing to life, finding a relief in her son's girlfriend's visit. For young and charismatic Lou de Laage in the role of Jeanne this is a big step up from her previous roles of troubled teenagers and shows just how much she grew up as an actor.

Focusing on the developing friendship between the two very different women, the movie always balances on the edge, where a few words can end everything.

With its beautiful imaginary and haunting score, THE WAIT is still not an easy experience, but it has the charm of a dark fairy tale and quickly draws you in. This is an intelligent piece of cinema that will benefit from multiple viewing.

"L'Attesa" (2015 release from Italy; 99 min.; English title: "The Wait") brings the story of two women. As the movie opens, we see Anna (played by Juliette Binoche) at a church service, it looks like a funeral. Not long thereafter, Anna gets a phone call, during which she mentions "He's not here, I'm his mother, but come on over". Shortly thereafter, a young lady named Jeanne arrives at the estate (in Sicily, we later learn). She is the girlfriend of Anna's son Giuseppe. Anna tells her that Giuseppe will be back later in the week, in time for Easter. Where is Giuseppe? Why won't he take Jeanne's calls? What is really going on here? To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the feature debut of Italian writer-director Piero Messina, who previously was assistant-director in the Oscar-winning "The Great Beauty". Here, he builds a mystery as to why Giuseppe is absent, when he might return (or not) and what really happened to him. We are left guessing from start to finish, while we see the great Juliette Binoche deliver another towering performance as she grieves (whose funeral was that anyway? do we really believe it when Anna tells Jeanne "My brother died"?), Up-and-coming French actress Lou de Laâge as Jeanne is equally outstanding, a new talent we surely have not seen the last of. As mentioned, the movie is set in Sicily, which I typically do not associate with lakes and water, both of which are prominent in the film. Last but certainly not least, there is a ton of great music in the movie, both the original score (which director Messina co-composed I might add) and songs placements. There is a note-worthy scene in the movie which plays out as Leonard Cohen's "Waiting for the Miracle" is blaring, and the XX's "Missing" plays over the movie's end credits. There couldn't have been a more appropriate song to close out the movie.

"L'Attesa" opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati and I couldn't wait to see it. The Friday early evening screening where I saw this at turned out to be a private screening: I was literally the only person in the theater, to my surprise. That said, it is clear that this movie is going to struggle to find a large audience: it is slow-moving, with no clear resolutions, and "all talk, no action". These are not criticisms as far as I'm concerned, au contraire, I found myself mesmerized by the way the movie unfolded, and this flew by in no time. If you are in the mood for a somber but top-notch foreign film dealing with grief, absence, and longing, I'd encourage you to check this out, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. "L'Attesa" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I've seen it as a part of Italian Cinema Festival in Lisbon, the director was there. To the end I wondered how this relatively young man could make it - bring a spectator in the intersection of sorrow, enchantment and tension and keep him there the whole film.

There was a lot of wondering in general - during and after, - a lot of associations and interpretations. The film keeps you very alive in spite of difficult theme, awaken, wanting something from the characters, wanting to be like the characters, asking questions, enjoying slow beautiful shots, colors, landscapes, soundtrack, actresses. Remembering other roles of Juliette Binoche as in "Three colors: Blue" and "Paris, je t'aime", other astonishingly beautiful Italian films like "Stealing beauty". Wishing it to resolute and stop and to continue after titles.

J.S. Foer said "humorous is the only way to tell a sad story". "L 'attesa" with very convincing vitality states that the only way to tell a sad story is beautiful.

This is a haunting movie, but I think it could have used a tad more plot. Even Binoche's genius for ambiguous facial expressions strains to paper over deficiencies in the story.

I was intrigued to see that it was based on a Pirandello play, but "based" is too strong - it's at best inspired by "La vita che ti diedi", and from what I can tell (I'm not fluent in Italian) the movie omits most of the play's boldest psychological points.

This visually beautiful, if self-consciously arty, Italian film marks the feature debut of Piero Messina who certainly displays all the promise of a major film-maker if he can only learn to move things along at a somewhat more acceptable pace and be less concerned with the 'look' of his films and more concerned with the feelings of his characters. This is a somewhat high-toned piece based on a play by Pirandello and it's very much designed around the performances of Juliette Binoche as a grieving mother and Lou de Laage as her son's girlfriend. It's certainly well done but it also smacks of the worst kind of art-house cinema; this is Antonioni-light. See it by all means though you may have to keep pinching yourself from time to time to stay awake.