"Don't Move (Non ti muovere)" is a European intellectual take on "Unfaithful" with issues of abuse, class, religion and regionalism replacing the Hollywood thriller aspect of the results of infidelity within an upper middle class marriage.
The characters start out from the get go freighted with way too much symbolism before they finally just become moving and well-acted participants in a sad affair.
Penelope Cruz, as the ragtag object of the obsession of the character portrayed by magnetic star/co-writer and director Sergio Castellitto, is actually named "Italia," is an Albanian immigrant, and lives in a condemned house amidst the ruins of a thwarted and overly ambitious luxury housing project, which somehow towards the end of the movie seems to be located in the same town as the successful surgeon who lives in a gorgeous seaside villa with his beautiful, loving, highly educated and not oblivious wife.
The two meet a la Catherine Breillat's sexually brutal films, but the trajectory of their lives becomes more conventional and tragic, as the power shifts between them. It is obvious from the beginning that Cruz (who doesn't sounds squeaky speaking in Italian as she does in Engllish) is a poster child for low self-esteem due to childhood abuse, while the doctor, with his own father issues, clearly feels more at east slumming with her than with his own wealthy doctor-as-god friends and their own failing marriages.
I suppose it's to the credit of the script that there isn't anything obviously annoying about the wife, except perhaps that she appears to be Northern Italian, particularly once she agrees to bear a child, whose fate will instigate the doctor's guilty flashbacks, even as a plot point recalls the silly Chris Columbus comedy "Nine Months." The parent/child relationship is well portrayed, from the warmth and sympathy to the realistic tension.
The pop music songs are lovely, though without subtitles the significance of all but the Leonard Cohen track remain mysterious.
The characters start out from the get go freighted with way too much symbolism before they finally just become moving and well-acted participants in a sad affair.
Penelope Cruz, as the ragtag object of the obsession of the character portrayed by magnetic star/co-writer and director Sergio Castellitto, is actually named "Italia," is an Albanian immigrant, and lives in a condemned house amidst the ruins of a thwarted and overly ambitious luxury housing project, which somehow towards the end of the movie seems to be located in the same town as the successful surgeon who lives in a gorgeous seaside villa with his beautiful, loving, highly educated and not oblivious wife.
The two meet a la Catherine Breillat's sexually brutal films, but the trajectory of their lives becomes more conventional and tragic, as the power shifts between them. It is obvious from the beginning that Cruz (who doesn't sounds squeaky speaking in Italian as she does in Engllish) is a poster child for low self-esteem due to childhood abuse, while the doctor, with his own father issues, clearly feels more at east slumming with her than with his own wealthy doctor-as-god friends and their own failing marriages.
I suppose it's to the credit of the script that there isn't anything obviously annoying about the wife, except perhaps that she appears to be Northern Italian, particularly once she agrees to bear a child, whose fate will instigate the doctor's guilty flashbacks, even as a plot point recalls the silly Chris Columbus comedy "Nine Months." The parent/child relationship is well portrayed, from the warmth and sympathy to the realistic tension.
The pop music songs are lovely, though without subtitles the significance of all but the Leonard Cohen track remain mysterious.