The reason to watch this movie is Mercedes Sampietro as Liliana, wife of Fernando, the male protagonist. Fernando rhapsodizes about how he and his wife are so comfortable in each other's silences, but the audience does not get to enjoy these silences, because he keeps interrupting with voice-overs, which are excerpts from his journal, aka Notebook #19 (thankfully, he doesn't read #1-18). At the beginning of the film, Fernando lectures his university students, future teachers themselves, about getting students to think critically and to ask questions. But the film doesn't give the audience time to think. Instead, it hits us over the head with Fernando's pedantic pronouncements. The character of Liliana is an ideal wife who can't possibly exist except in the imagination, but Sampietro makes her believable and sympathetic. Fernando and Liliana's marriage is based on love and trust, which we'd know from watching them interact, but instead we have to suffer through a bizarre scene in which an attractive middle-aged woman flirts with Fernando, then gets teary-eyed during his long-winded speech about marital fidelity. I'm sure the director meant the tears differently, but I interpreted them as tears of boredom.
Review of Common Ground
