BootDigest
Such a frustrating disappointment
Abbigail Bush
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Haven Kaycee
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
mario_c
Unlike the main title may suggest THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE is not your typical romantic comedy or even romantic drama… no, it's well far beyond that! It's mostly a drama for sure but where love enters in a very dark and unusual way… It tells the story of an unsympathetic and lonely man TITTA DI GIROLAMO (played by Toni Servillo) who lives in a hotel room for about 8 years and has a very solitary and monotonous live. He has some dark secrets as well… Nothing changes his routines until he falls in love for the incredibly beautiful green eyes of SOFIA (Olivia Magnani), the girl who works in the Hotel's bar.The plot is straight to follow but the kind of cinematography used and the way the scenes are mounted turn this movie a bit puzzling at parts. The camera-work is excellent and the way the director shot some angles and details are simply brutal! I'm talking about the scene in the hotel room when the camera passes over DI GIROLAMO's head and then stops shooting his face upside down! Or even the very two last scenes of the movie. These are just two examples of this great directing work! The soundtrack is quite nice as well.This story doesn't end unsolved but I think there're some questions that still without answers at the end, like what happened to the mysterious SOFIA… To sum up, it's a good film with a great performance from Toni Servillo.
ahmed_elmaradny
This movie about a man who lives a very poring life where everything is scheduled, he did not want to talk to anybody or to have interest in anything. After seeing a beautiful young girl he starts to look to his life with new glasses. He wanted to change the rhythm by starting a new life with her that considered by him as the biggest risk in his life but dramatically at the moment he was escaping from the past he thought that she did not love him and so he decided to die in (exceptional) way which needs a lot of courage. The acting was good, the screenplay is simple though captivating, and the direction is the finest in the movie.This movie worth to be watched.
Sindre Kaspersen
Italian screenwriter and director Paolo Sorrentino's second feature film which he wrote, premiered In competition at the 57th Cannes International Film Festival in 2004, was shot on locations in Italy and is an Italian production which was produced by producers Domenico Procacci, Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima and Angelo Curti. It tells the story about a middle-aged man named Titta De Girolamo who has lived in a anonymous hotel in Switzerland during the last eight years. Titta is a well dressed and short-spoken man who has maintained an ice-cold facade for a long time and who spends his days at the hotel's bar and lobby where he distantly observes the personnel and the guests, but his life alters the day he unexpectedly allows himself to become interested in a young and attractive bartender named Sofia.Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino had made a number of short films before he in 2001 made his debut feature film "One Man Up" and he received international recognition three years later with his next narrative feature. Within the 100 passing minutes this piece of art lasts, times existence disappears and one's eyes is magnetically drawn towards Paolo Sorrentino's minimalistic vision of an esoteric character's monotone and ritualistic life at a hotel where colorful individuals live in a spiral of repetitive behavior. Through the protagonist's point of view, a reflective voice-over narration, sterling production design by Italian production designer Lino Fiorito, cinematography by Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and a great score by Italian composer Pasquale Catalano, Paolo Sorrentino depicts a refined study of character about a nostalgic and introvert 49-year-old man who against his own principles let's the light into his life at the moment he establishes communication with an accommodating woman who has spent two years trying to declare her existence to him. This fascinating play with perspectives which almost exclusively takes place at a hotel, becomes a distinct film experience much due to Paolo Sorrentino's characteristic use of close-ups, repetitions, slow-motion scenes, long takes and sequences with rapid editing where the music is impressively well calculated, and is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, quiet though intensifying continuity, cinematographic expertise, aesthetic depiction of an almost mechanical upper class milieu, synoptic screenplay, quick-witted dialog and the understated and convincing acting performances by Italian actor Toni Servillo and Italian actress Olivia Magnani. An existential drama, an unconventional love fable, a thriller, a neo-noir or a gangster drama, Paolo Sorrentino's genre mix is well-constructed and this ingenious work is inspiring cinematic creativity from the innovating opening scene to the stylized ending. A brilliant exercise of style and form where image, sound, movement, figure of speech and narration is sublimely incorporated.
patrick-bliss-1
The opening shot of the Consequences of Love perfectly sets up this intriguing and absorbing film. A travellator slowly carries a solitary out of focus figure towards the camera, trailing a huge suitcase behind him. Like the central character in the film, we know nothing of him and our initial interpretation of him, his profession, the contents of the suitcase could be way off the mark.Consequences of Love is that kind of film. From the title you might expect a Bergmanesq dissection of a relationship. What we have instead is a lead character, Titta, living life in emotional exile, seemingly choosing to cut himself off from those around him. If the film can be classified in any way, I would call it a mystery, as we are engaged in working out who Titta is and what he is about. What we know from the start is he is 50'ish, cool, composed and expensively attired. He has lived for the last eight years in a plush looking Swiss hotel, always paying his room fee on time but seldom showing any interest in the staff or other guests.His only real companions are a couple who he plays occasional card games with. The couple, it transpires, used to own the hotel but have now gambled everything away and have only the room they live in left. Their love of money, antiques and each other was their undoing and Titta seems to identify with their plight. He once had it all, but now is now living as a virtual prisoner in the hotel. His brother, a long haired surf instructor, drops in to see him occasionally, but he sees his visits as more of an intrusion than a pleasure. They talk about the person Titta considers to be his best friend, even though he hasn't seen him for 25 years. This long lost friend is now a telephone engineer, repairing the communication network that brings so many together. Meanwhile Tittas phone calls to his wife and children end quickly when they refuse to speak to him.Midway through the film Titta makes an uncharacteristic move and begins to open up to a young barmaid from the hotel. With his judgement clouded by emotion he sets himself on a course of actions that will ultimately seal his fate for good.The slow unfolding of Tittas fall from grace is and beautifully scripted, shot and scored. The thumping techno soundtrack does much to build up the tension as more and more secrets are revealed, the final half hour turning into a taught thriller as Titta lets his mask slip and must once again face the consequences of his actions. The ending, with a visual nod to Felini, is dramatic yet ambiguous and leaves the audience to once more question his motives.Patrick Bliss, 01/06/06