Released in the same year as film version of Peter Shaffer's stage play Amadeus. Pupi Avati's Mozart film shares little with the grandiose epic of Milos Forman. Perhaps it only really shares it's loose relation to historical facts. But where Forman drives home Shaffer's story with absolute confidence and dramatic certainty, Avati threads gently around the historic persona and in reality makes a film about childhood in general rather than Mozart in particular. The focus of the story is that last summer, those last few weeks of childhood. Avati tells his story as Mozart is fourteen years old spending time at Count Pallavicini's summer estate outside Bologna, before an important exam at the Philharmonic Academy. Mozart (Cristopher Davidson) is more taken by the subtle mysteries of the estate, the wonder of the surrounding woods and a friendship with the count's son Guiseppe (Dario Parisini). Perhaps it is not so much the woods in themselves as what they represent as they stand between the estate where Mozart studies and the house of the beautiful Antonia (Barbara Rebeschini), the young girl destined to marry Guiseppe. The young trio (the "three of us" of the title), form a loving friendship experiencing the awakening of adolescence together. Emotive as the subject matter is there are no big gestures in the film, the trio explores each other and their surroundings and find new emotions of love and camaraderie on the threshold of forming their own persona's in a place and time where the grown up world is both near and far at the same time. Avati's story and direction threats the subject with tenderness and elegance, employing lush 18th century milieu's, atmospheric ochre color schemed cinematography and lovingly pastiche Mozart music by Ritz Ortolani. In all this Avanti strays from overstating events, giving the story an equal sense of honest realism and lingering mystery. This is not a film about an exceptional, singular genius, but a film about a young boy.
2 Reviews
My brief review of the film
sol-6 September 2005
Released, perhaps fatally so, in same year as 'Amadeus', this Mozart biopic is a very different take on the famous child prodigy composer, and also a far inferior one. It barely touches beneath the surface of the protagonist, and there is not much of a story to the material either - it is just about one summer in Mozart's early years and the persons who he interacted with. Hardly anything happens, and what does happen is neither exciting nor very engaging. As one would expect, the music is choices are reasonable throughout, and the costumes are fairly good. However, I cannot think of much to recommend this film on. It looks and sounds nice, but with little character study and events that are not out of the ordinary, it really is not much at all.
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