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| Cinema of Our Time |
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First Love
Primo amore [FIRST] Italy, 2004, 100 min, Color , 35mm In Italian with English Subtitles Canadian Premiere Directed By: Matteo Garrone PROD: Domenico Procacci SCRS: Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso, Vitaliano Trevisan CAM: Marco Onorato ED: Marco Spoletini MUS: Banda Osiris CAST: Michela Cescon, Vitaliano Trevisan |
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In a country famous for its food, one young woman is slowly starving to death. When Vittorio meets Sonia on a blind date, she asks him, "Am I what you were expecting?" "No," he answers. "I thought you'd be thinner." Instead of punching him in the stomach, Sonia begins an entirely new life, literally shedding her former self, and in the process losing any sense of what truly matters. Vittorio wants a woman with both a mind and a body, the latter preferably with no excess flesh, just the pure hard perfection of bone and skin. Where loves ends and pathological control begins is almost impossible to say in this unsettling psychological drama from innovative director Matteo Garrone (The Embalmer). Vittorio's profession as a goldsmith provides an allegorical subtext to his dysfunctional relationship, but fails to fully explain the motivation of both participants in this process of paring away. As she shrinks, Vittorio lectures his girlfriend, "Your mind and your body are not in the same place." He fails to understand that the processes of smelting, polishing and honing something down to its bare essence doesn't work with human beings, who are intractable composites of their fleshly and spiritual selves. You must kill to dissect one from the other. As events begin to spiral horribly out of control, it becomes increasingly clear that there will be no "happily ever after" for this couple as the war between the mind and the body eventually erupts. Roman Summer (00), The Embalmer (02) Sponsored By Istituto Italiano di Cultura |
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