'O re

Watching this was quite a puzzling experience. I felt like reevaluating my feelings about the film as I went along.

Costume design and overall cinematograpy is top notch. I can only imagine the effort on research and tailoring. Very few movies have struck me with the attention to detail on that front, and I observed that with this one results were also functional - unlike what Michael Keaton put on for batman in 1989, this film from the same year makes sure people can move inside their outfits.

Now... Ornella Muti is a force of nature. There are two layers to watching in her scenes: 1. You are watching the movie 2. You are watching Ornella Muti. She's beautiful on a mystical level, but can also act. And no words are needed for Giancarlo Giannini. He was great back then, more than a decade before he went full international with Hanniabal.

Even if you know little or nothing at all about the era, the story is very clean and relatable. Reminiscent also of The Barefoot Countess and certain other classics, it deals with the turbulance in and around Italy as the king of Naples is falling out of power, while the king having troubles with the wife due mostly to his Oedipus complex of sorts.

But that's not really the most important plot here: We get to see the ordinary people, those who get subjected to murder on a daily basis as conflicts go on. Everything is highly theatrical, surprisingly colorful on a visual level, and also kinda surreal.

I was beginning to get bored close to the end, but despite problems with pace and sequencing the film managed to come full circle to make sure no dots remained unconnected. I'd like to thank RAI Storia for airing these hidden gems, so people like me can enjoy via satellite. But also, I keep not understanding why they keep the very same content hidden via geoblocking when it comes to RaiPlay.

Anyways... Surprisingly unique costume drama with an awkwrd and powerful spirit of its own.

This film is excellent. It possesses great values of production, fantastic costumes, great exteriors, exquisite music and for fans of legendary actors and actresses the leading roles are played by Giancarlo Giannini (as Francesco II of Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies) and Ornella Muti (as the queen Maria Sophia of Austria). It's not mandatory being an expert of Italian history of the nineteenth century in order to understand the drama. The king has been deposed and he is despondent, immersed in the reverie of his past, surrounded in his quarters by images and statuettes that constitute the center of his superstitious veneration. The queen is beautiful and vibrant. She is working actively for the restoration of her husband and above all things, she wants to give him an heir. He is absentminded and resigned to live without the throne, he refuses to have the intercourse with his wife and the tension between the two characters scales up. ¿Will the queen commit adultery to fulfill her goal of giving an heir to the kingdom that will have to be reconquered at the cost of a bloody war of brothers versus brothers ? There is no battles showed in the film but instead we see the backstage of that combats. The psychological struggles of those who must take a course of action, their loyalties, betrayals and old grudges that frequently end up in violent death. Giancarlo Gianinni is absolutely perfect in his role, he is an absolute master of his art and Ornella Muti is, like always, loved by the camera, and she can act too! The only regret is that this movie is very rare, it's practically unknown outside of Italy. I hope that this situation changes in the near future.

Though at times I did quite enjoy this, I will admit to not always knowing what was going on! It blurs the lines between biopic, history and pantomime to the point where it is often quite difficult to discover just who is sane and who is not. There certainly was a King Francesco II of Naples and the Two Sicilies (Giancarlo Giannini) who was married to Maria Sofia (Ornella Muti) and they were deposed by Garibaldi before Vittorio Emanuele incorporated their realm into the newly founded kingdom of Italy, but as to the rest of this drama - well it's a speculative romp through the caricature of characters, costumes and silliness that accompanied the two ex-monarchs as they first fled to Rome as a guest of the Pope then became a bit more broke and migratory. The King was fairly stoic about his chances of restoration, his wife much less so. She was adamant that an heir would solve their problems but he wasn't interested. He seemed much more intent on getting beatification for his late lamented mother rather than looking after the future of his own family. It was quite a turbulent time in Europe and as powers ebbed and flowed, so did their fortunes and that's what this jovial exercise depicts. Giannini looks like he is having a good time indulging in an array of antics that possibly illustrated why he was deposed in the first place; Muti does well enough without a great deal to work with and Carlo Croccolo steals most of his scenes as their savvy butler "Rafele". The narrative takes quite a swipe at the ideology of patriotism, of loyalties and, frankly, of dynastic incompetence fuelled by stupidity at all levels of what could loosely be called "government". Sadly, it's a jumbled mess most of the time and the queen's penchant for dressing up as a man to stir feelings of rebellion didn't always work. That said, though, it's quirky and interesting to see how auteur Luigi Magni took a more domestic (less Hollywood) look at aspects of the sometimes quite brutal foundations of his modern nation whilst poking a bit of fun at the zealous excesses that involved.

There is everything in this film - an endless melancholy of unfathomable measures, hilarious comedy almost jumping out of the film, adorable music all the way through by Nicola Piovani, unforgettable characters personified by some of the foremost actors of the day, the overwhelming beauty of Ornella Muti and the equally overwhelming sincerity of Giancarlo Giannini, with any number of supporting actors, particularly the 'gobbi', the team of jugglers and clowns of the commedia dell'arte making the film burst with good humour, and the sinister drama of the traumatic transformation of Italy including the painful deposition of the king of Naples ('the two Sicilies') with his queen for a settlement in Rome in permanent pathetic exile, growing the more pathetic for her efforts to regain the throne and for his resignation to what he feels as a failure of a life. This is a tragicomedy where both the tragic and the comedy elements are pushed to their extremes with impacts of contrasts, the ideal world of preserved appearance of royalty poised against brutal political reality with all the worst atrocities of civil war. This is a film worth revisiting and watching again, reminding you of the best moments of Visconti ('The Leopard') and Fellini, and joining the highest ranks of Italian cinema.

I've been a big fan of Giancarlo Giannini ever since I first saw him in the original "Swept Away" (a movie Madonna later murdered). He is quite possibly one of the greatest actors Italy has produced in the last 50 years. In this movie, he plays the very gentle last King of the Two Sicilies, who seems resigned to his exile. His wife, played by one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, is not so content, and devotes a lot of her time to forming plots to get them back on their former throne. Running in the background to the main story, are their obsessions with the heir that was never born, a political mistake, according to her, while he's convinced it's haunting him.

It plays a little like a period movie, but has more heart and character than most, and sometimes feels like we're getting an intimate look at these historical people in a soap opera kind of way. All in all, a great movie for those who love period movies, Italian history, or a great story.