Claudia Gerini Movies

Left-wing and right-wing agendas go head-to-head in Diverso da Chi?, Umberto Carteni's satirical skewering of contemporary Italian politics. Luca Argentero stars as Piero, an openly homosexual gay rights activist, running as the more progressive candidate in the mayoral election of Udine, Italy. At the other end of the spectrum stands the bigoted right-wing candidate, who builds physical walls á la Padua around his community to keep foreigners and drug dealers confined to their various neighborhoods, and his candidate for vice-mayor, pro-family values champion Adele (Claudia Gerini). In an odd twist, Piero temporarily sets his political loyalties and gayness aside and sleeps with the gorgeous Adele, betraying his male partner, Remo (Filippo Negro) in the process. This has a positive effect on Adele, who starts to reexamine her political convictions as a result, but Piero grows horrified by his own actions and runs away; meanwhile, Remo proposes that they form a family with two fathers, and the upcoming mayoral race continues to beckon. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore returns to the helm for this suspenseful thriller concerning a young Ukrainian prostitute-turned-cleaning woman named Irina (Kseniya Rappoport). Years ago, Irina was drawn into an international prostitution ring before being brutalized by a man named Mold (Michele Placido) who also killed her boyfriend. Flash-forward to the present, and Irina is a humble cleaning woman in a building owned by jewelers. Though her appearance would suggest poverty, Irina always has a sizable wad of cash in her pocket and lives in a large apartment across the street from the loudly dysfunctional Adacher family. Gradually, the mousy cleaning woman works her way into the family home, befriending the parents (Claudia Gerini and Pierfrancesco Favino) and becoming a trusted confidante to their daughter Thea (Clara Dossena). As her relationship with the family deepens, her motivations for getting so close become frighteningly clear. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Don't Move is the second feature from actor/director Sergio Castellito (Mostly Martha), who wrote the script with his wife, actress/author Margaret Mazzantini from her best-selling novel. Castellito stars as Timoteo, a successful surgeon and permissive father whose teenage daughter, Angela (Elena Perino), has just had a life-threatening motorbike accident. Sitting in the hospital, wondering if his daughter will survive, Timoteo thinks back to a fateful day 15 years earlier when his car broke down on a remote country road in the rain and a bedraggled young woman, Italia (Penélope Cruz), invited him into her ramshackle home only to have him force himself upon her. Timoteo then returned home to his lovely wife, Elsa (Claudia Gerini). But unable to get Italia out of his mind, Timoteo returned again and again to her sordid shack. They began to develop genuine feelings for each other. Elsa is reluctant to have children, despite Timoteo's wishes, so when he learns that Italia is pregnant, he has a critical decision to make about how he wants to live his life. Don't Move was shown at New York City's Walter Reade Theater in 2004 as part of a Sergio Castellito retrospective presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Veteran Spanish filmmaker Mario Camus directed La Playa De Los Galgos (The Beach of the Greyhounds) from his own script. Pablo (Gustavo Salmeron) tends to his elderly mother and is forever taking steps to find his missing brother. One day he meets Berta (Claudia Gerini), whom he becomes involved with. They seek out a psychiatrist named Dubbini (Miguel Angel Sola), as he may possess information on Pablo's brother. Both men fall madly in love with Berta, but her violent past will haunt everyone in the film. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A mother who thinks of marriage in terms of business butts heads with a daughter who has her own unusual ideas about love in Lina Wertmuller's screen adaptation of Maria Orsini Natale's historical novel. Francesca (Sophia Loren) was a woman of common birth whose beauty and charm so entranced Prince Giordano Montorsi (Giancarlo Giannini) that he took her hand in marriage in the 1890s. Francesca and the Prince had a baby, Federico, and when the boy became seriously ill, Francesca pledged to the Lord that if her son was spared, she would adopt a needy orphan. Federico recovered, and true to her word, Francesca and the Prince adopted a nine-year-old girl, Nunziata. Years later, Nunziata has grown to become an attractive young woman, and Francesca watches over the Prince's financial affairs, having learned a thing or two about business from helping her father manage his thriving pasta company. Francesca does a fine job of handling the royal accounts, but when one business deal goes spectacularly sour, the Prince decides he should mind the books from now on; he proves to have no skills for the task, and the royal family is soon in dire financial straits. Eager to put the family back on its feet, Francesca begins to broker a marriage between Federico (Raoul Bova) and the daughter of a wealthy shipping tycoon. However, Federico is less than enthusiastic about the idea, largely because he's fallen in love with his adopted sister Nunziata. Francesca is appalled at this and overrules his objections, but after Federico goes to the altar, Nunziata begins arranging a lucrative wedding of her own; Nunziata's plan is to collect a large dowry, and use the money to fund a competing pasta company that will put her mother's firm out of business. Francesca e Nunziata was produced for Italian television, but received theatrical release abroad. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this farcical comedy, Renato (Pere Ponce) is a gay man who meets Ginevra (Claudia Gerini), a member of a lesbian rock band, at a friend's wedding. The two get along well, and when Renato's grandmother tells him, as her dying wish, that she'd like him to have sex with a woman just once so he would know what he's missing, he feels honor bound to try it -- and figures that Ginevra would be the best woman to ask. To their mutual surprise, Ginevra and Renato quite enjoy the experience, and they soon find that they have a lot of explaining to do to their respective significant others, Elisa (Ana Risueno) and Francesco (Paolo Sassanelli). La Vespa e la Regina was the debut feature for director Antonello De Leo. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Drawing from Othello and Un ballo in maschera, Italian filmmaker (Claudia Florio) directs this English language thriller. Actress Michela (Claudia Gerini) receives the cryptic offer to assume the identity of another. When she passes, her English roommate Corinna (Susan Lynch) signs up and begins meeting with an older man (Jonathan Pryce), playing the part of a married woman being seduced by an art-forger. Though she finds herself attracted to her mysterious patron, she realizes that she is part of some great dastardly plot. She -- along with her jealous boyfriend (Enrico Silvestrio) -- sets out to discover his true motivations. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Former cabaret performer Leonardo Pieraccioni (The Cyclone) directed, co-scripted (with Giovanni Veronesi), and stars in this popular Italian film, given the widest opening release in Italian film history. Ottone (Pieraccioni) and beautiful Lorenza (Claudia Gerini) are pet-store partners. He loses his lover to a butcher and moves in with his friend Barbara (Barbara Enrichi). At the same time, he courts secretly married Argentine heiress Luna (Vanessa Lorenzo), who is simply toying with the unsuspecting Ottone. Ottone's pal Germano (Massimo Ceccherini), once struck by lightning, survived because of his rubber Spiderman boots. Germano and Ottone both yearn for true love, but problems always arise. In the Maldives, Ottone seeks out a psychoanalyst (Luigi Petrucci) in hopes of gaining some understanding of his confused relationships with the opposite sex. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Comprised of a series of bizarre and unrelated incidents, this absurdist Italian comedy earned the inglorious honor of being the film with the most audience walkouts at the 1996 Venice Film Festival. In the first segment a widow attends her husband's funeral and ends up having sex with her brother-in-law beside her husband's casketed corpse. The late husband eggs them on with his ghostly comments. In scene two, a wife leaves her husband in favor of a hunky mortician. Strangely, the mortician rapidly becomes an old man while the abandoned husband becomes younger, stronger and much happier. A photographer becomes terribly paranoid after he steps on a bus passenger's foot and begs his pardon. When the passenger refuses to offer it, the photographer goes off the deep end. In another episode, a cruel headmistress at a school for social graces tries to capture and destroy a young free-spirited girl's individuality. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Vulgar, blood-soaked humor abounds in this rollicking Italian black comedy that follows the hellish, bizarre New Years Eve of two average guys who find themselves stumbling from one outlandish situation to the next. After one guy gets dumped by his girl friend, he brashly invites himself to the exclusive party his pal plans to attend. His friend is not happy at spending the evening with such a morose character but allows him to go. Unfortunately, things go awry at the party and he must take the troublesome friend to his parent's suburban home. On a dark, empty highway, the two spy two hitchers. They offer them a ride and end up held at gun point, robbed and then running frantically for their lives in a field. Their flight leads them through dense woods and ultimately to a seemingly empty farmhouse that proves inhabited by a criminally insane poetry fan and his brutal gang. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi