Baarìa **

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Cast: Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Ángela Molina
Monica Bellucci, Raoul Bova, Enrico Lo Verso, Gaetano Aronica

Epic in every sense of the word, Giuseppe Tornatore's "Baarìa"is a lovesong to the Sicilian town of Bagheria; Tornatore's own "Amarcord" if you like.
Like Fellini's masterpiece, this movie is composed of vignettes where we see life filtered through the views of the townspeople, particularly Peppino Torrenuova (Scianna) who becomes our guide through the decade spawning yarn.
We follow Peppino from his humble beginnings as the son of a shepherd (Aronica), his courting of the beautiful Mannina (Madè), up to his association with the Communist party, problems with the mafia and the creation of his own family.
Beautifully shot and framed, "Baarìa"'s major flaw is how aimless it all feels. Being such a personal film, it's obvious that the beauty will vary from the author to the beholder but then why put so many memories into film if they only serve oneself?
It's impossible to avoid comparing this movie to "Amarcord", Fellini is mentioned in the screenplay and is an obvious influence to a character in the film that represents Tornatore. Fellini too delivered a romantic ode to his Rimini, but unlike the master, Tornatore has little to add besides how idyllic life was.
While Fellini added a ceratin kind magic to the retelling of his childhood memories (he was after all a self professed liar who had no trouble making up Arabic princes and outrageous adventures) Tornatore remains a bit more reverential and tries not to offend anyone by trivializing fascism for example.
In the process though, he ends up doing just that, by turning political differences into impersonal things that more than influence the characters and the story, become irrelevant details that steer the movie away from its loving gazes at mountains and ancient villas.
Tornatore avoids all conflict that could make his characters human and create emotional connections, instead choosing to light them appropriately in ways that their beauty too overcomes the ugliness of real life.
His cast is made out of gorgeous Italian people (including Bova and Bellucci who each have exactly one scene and are put in the credits just to attract audiences probably) who spend time looking like young Christy Turlingtons emulating Sophia Loren and the sculpted men Pasolini cast for his own films.
This brings up a dilemma as we wonder if Tornatore truly remembers his childhood like this and is in complete denial of tragedies (one character in the film is notorious for being able to sleep throughout WWII air raids) or if he's trying to make the longest "visit Sicily" commercial in history.
Despite all the time we spend in Baarìa we are never able to create an encompassing vision of the town and we definitely aren't tempted to revisit it.

Broken Embraces ****

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo
José Luis Gómez, Rubén Ochandiano, Tamar Novas, Ángela Molina
Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave, Rossy de Palma, Kiti Manver

Life may not offer any extra footage but the redeeming, regenerative power of movies has the effect of rebirth in Pedro Almodóvar's "Broken Embraces".

A cunning examination of the auteur's role as both God and devil, the plot centers on Harry Caine (Homar) a blind screenwriter who reminisces about his past.
He remembers how fourteen years before, he wasn't only able to see, but was a thriving film director called Mateo Blanco. During the filming of his first comedy he fell in love with his leading lady Lena (Cruz), mistress of Ernesto Martel (Gómez) a powerful businessman turned movie producer.
When their affair ends, Mateo takes the name of Harry and is left putting back together the pieces of what went wrong. This doesn't only include their doomed relationship, but the reconstruction of the movie he let slip away from his fingers.
With his usual mix of melodrama, dark comedy and referential winks, Almodóvar comes up with one of his mot labyrinthine creations yet, in which revenge tales get tangled among studio productions, Oedipal vendettas and Hitchcockian voyeurism.
Because "Broken Embraces" above everything is a movie about watching. Mateo watches through his camera, Harry watches with his other senses, Almodóvar watches through his own lens and then there's also us as an audience.
When a character named Ray-X (Ochandiano) appears asking Harry to write a screenplay with him, he also brings a camera.
What interests Pedro here is pulling off the hat trick Michelangelo Antonioni did in "Blow Up" by coming to terms with the tragic fact that no single person in the world will be able to see it all.
This is brought up in a scene of haunting beauty where Mateo takes a picture at the beach, only to discover a couple in an embrace when he develops the film. The couple wasn't there before, but it was.
This acknowledgment of our limitation as humans offers Almodóvar another chance to try and be God by establishing that a film-considering you keep the raw material-can be done and undone in a million different ways, each time creating something completely new and magical.
While a life has no director's cut.
In her fourth collaboration with Almodóvar, Cruz gives perhaps her most complex performance to date. Lena starts as a secretary with a "Belle de Jour" past who gives in to Martel because he helps her out economically.
We can't however bring ourselves to question her morally and in several scenes Lena goes through self flagellation that reaches heartbreaking proportions.
She's "too beautiful to be funny" says Mateo's assistant Judit (Portillo) about Lena, but she proves her wrong by turning in a delightful performance in "Girls and Suitcases" (the movie within a movie that also turns out to be "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown").
The director gives Cruz an Audrey Hepburn look (there's a ponytail straight out of "Funny Face") but her performance is shaped around Ingrid Bergman.
From her prostitution-out-of-duty in movies like "Notorious" and to a degree "Casablanca", to her heartbreaking turn in "Voyage to Italy" (a scene of which is featured in the moment where the film's title is borrowed from) to even aspects of Bergman's personal life (falling in love with her renowned director while being in a relationship).
Like a Bergman performance, Cruz inhabits Lena quietly. Her introduction happens in the most inconsequential of ways to show us how Cruz's beauty is the rare kind that can also go unseen. Her way of giving herself to Mateo fills the screen with the kind of passion classic stars could suggest with a glance.
Homar's double turn reminds us of the wonderful characters in film noir. His job is also to evoke Pedro himself and in one scene as he listens to a woman describe herself, his face lights up with the kind of joy we imagine Almodóvar directs every scene with. Gómez gives a menacing performance and Portillo's portrait of bitterness and oxymoronic loving resentment might just be the most layered character in the movie.
There's also a lot of duality in "Broken Embraces" as every character must play a part; they're all involved in a game of hide and seek with each other and themselves. this could bring us to the conclusion that Almodóvar might not be in tune with his characters' needs.
Almost everything in the film reaches redundant proportions as Pedro shows us everything., he tells us everyone's secrets, specifically shoots elements that might otherwise seem irrelevant and even recurs to the sin of matching images with narration. Or so he makes us think.
It's only after the movie has ended that we begin to understand that his plan was to take us into Harry Caine territory all along. Like Harry we remain blind throughout the movie and need to be shown and told everything, up to the most infinite detail.
And like Harry there's more than meets the figurative eye as we leave the movie thinking we know everything. When "Broken Embraces" finishes-on a perfect note-we see a contented Harry confident that he has reached catharsis.
It won't be a mystery if your mind instantly goes back to a scene in the movie where we see a character trying to put together a torn picture on a table. As the camera zooms out we see that it's merely one out of what might be hundreds of photos. When we leave "Broken Embraces" we have just begun to solve the mystery.