I just finished watching this movie. I always loved Lina Wermüller movies. A fantastic director. Her fantasy is out of this world. And this movie is as good or better than her previous ones.
Everybody plays her or his character to perfection. Sophia Loren, a master in her profession, superb, as usual. Raoul Bove, a beauty so ravishing that it's almost impossible to think that he actually is a regular human being, what a face!! And the color of people's eyes..., unreal.
I was struck, when in Naples, by the beauty of its people, and especially by the color of their eyes..., I wonder if the color of that fantastic sea has something to do with the color of Neapolitan eyes...
The story is so very well constructed that there are no fissures for criticisms.
Totally absorbent.
Spoken mostly in the Neapolitan dialect, a language that because of its voluptuousness makes it one of the most sensuous languages in the world, it gives the action a believability impossible to get with any other language. One regrets the thought -- while watching it-- that this film could eventually end.
The setting --Naples-- is out of this world, the interiors, as all the interiors of the upper classes in Italy, exquisite. Exquisite to the point of faintness.
The costumes, superb. Nature, outrageously green and fabulous. The music, as exquisite as the interiors, the classic music and the incredibly beautiful and nostalgic Neapolitan songs of the time, compliment their respective scenes to perfection.
Excellent the development of the young love and the unexpected ramifications of its passion. The different stories make one think also, that many times, marriages contracted as business, end up as a more satisfying experience --in the long run-- that the ones contracted by sheer love.
In the past --at the time of this movie, for example-- people knew this and most of the time marriages took place to reinforce a fortune with the addition of another fortune. As the Duchess of Windsor once said: "You can never be too thin or too rich", and she was the walking proof of that formula (although there is some gossip that swears that she was a man).
No matter, the formula remains the same. So. I think it's obvious that I LIKED this movie. See it yourself and make your own conclusions.
