Victor Cavallo Movies

Former documentary filmmaker Mimmo Calopresti (The Second Time) made this Italian-French romantic drama that focuses on fragile and phobic 30-year-old Angela (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). She should have a comfortable life, yet she sinks into solitude, hungers for love, can't communicate with her wealthy mother (Daria Nicolodi), and makes decisions based on various colors and numbers. Her conversations with her mother are strained and formal, so she expresses her barren existence during visits to her psychoanalyst (Calopresti), who has problems of his own. A meeting with divorced cello teacher Marco (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) sets Angela veering in another direction, one with obsessive overtones. The absent-minded Marco has his own emotional needs, and his passivity is seen in contrast to his energetic teenage daughter Malvi (Emanuela Macchniz). Making anonymous overtures to Marco, Angela sends him fragments of Japanese love poems, but he simply thinks one of his students is responsible for the notes. After an argument with her analyst upsets her, Angela's anxieties increase. She checks herself into a psychiatric clinic where she finds a friend in fellow patient Sara (Marina Confalone). Indications during a later encounter with Marco suggest the two might indeed find a connection. Once down as a producer of this film, Gerard Depardieu instead did only a brief cameo appearance in the role of a lawyer. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

A run of bad luck coupled with devastating pride marks the beginning of a once-successful businessman's inexorable downward slide that lands him in the subterranean bowels of the "Hotel Paura." This downbeat drama chronicles his descent. Carlo Ruggeri had a happy marriage and a good career as an executive until the day his company merged with another and he lost his job. His wife Liliana is at first supportive, but then the lease on their apartment expires and because Carlo is unemployed, the landlord refuses to renew it. With nowhere left to go, Carlo, Liliana and their son Paolo end up in welfare housing. Carlo is deeply embarrassed and refuses to ask his friends and family for help. Any that is offered, he promptly refuses, along with a couple of jobs that he deems unsuitable. Eventually Liliana looses her patience, takes Paolo and moves in with her family. No longer eligible for the government-sponsored housing, Carlo is forced into the street where he becomes a beggar. Some small salvation comes when he hooks up with the kindly Lucia, a street dweller who takes him to an abandoned subway station they call the Hotel Paura. Surrounded by the most intense poverty he has ever known, Carlo makes some profound self-discoveries. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

An aimless middle-aged man finds salvation through a guardian-angel in this Italian film. The tale, told in flashback, chronicles the life of Dino who after 50-years has yet to find success and has taken to wandering the streets of Rome. His boyhood friend was Daniele who grew up to become a priest. Daniele provided Dino with a sense of balance, but after he died, poor Dino was more adrift than ever. It is only after Daniele returns from the dead to become Dino's advisor and guardian that his life begins to finally assume meaning and find a direction. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a beloved Italian filmmaker, poet and novelist whose murder in 1975 threw the whole nation into shock. This drama attempts to document the killing and the aftermath while exploring the true motives for the killing. The film opens as the police are in hot pursuit of a car racing along the waterfront of Ostia. At the end of the chase they end up arresting one Pino Pelosi, a male prostitute who confesses to bludgeoning the director to death and running him over with a car. The initial evidence goes along with Pelosi's story. Intermingled with the drama is actual police and press footage of the murder scene, the trial and other related events. As the court goes to trial, it soon becomes apparent that Pelosi is not telling the whole truth. Despite the findings of the media, the police and the lawyers seem to be in an inordinate hurry to close the case and dismiss it as yet another gay killing. Although the film avoids making elaborate postulations about the whole truth of the killing, it does not deny the fact that Pelosi did not act alone. Unfortunately, though Pelosi was imprisoned for his crime, he refused to reveal the identities of the others involved. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The innovative Italian neuropsychiatrist Marco Lombardo Radice started at treatment movement which draws its name from the unlikely object of worship found in the Peanuts cartoon series, The Great Pumpkin, and it seems likely that this movie and its story represent some kind of homage to his memory. Arturo's wife walked out on him, and now he devotes all his time to his job. He (Sergio Castillitto) is a professor of psychiatry at the university hospital in Rome, and specializes in children's problems. When Pippi (Alessia Fugardi) is brought in for a consultation, it is alleged that she is an epileptic, but the good doctor thinks otherwise. He convinces her reluctant parents to leave her in his care, and through a series of brilliant manipulations, he manages to cure her. The world of mental illness and how it is handled in Italy are not seen through rose-colored glasses, here, and reviewers found tht what could have been a mere tear-jerker manages to be a convincing, gripping drama. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This drama tells the story of some Italian radicals who were active in the late 1970s. However, it is most notable for being the first Italian-made film to show prison riots, and it deals even-handedly with the Autonomy movement. In one way or another, all the events shown are closely based on actual things that happened. In the story, Sirio is a twenty-year-old political radical who drew the line at terrorism and is arguing with his friends about their violent ways when he is arrested along with them. His mere presence with them wins him a prison sentence. In prison, his real education begins when he meets the Professor (a stand-in for the real-life political theorist Toni Negri), one of his heroes. The film shows his transformation from an idealist to a desperate, forgotten prisoner who is unable to win his freedom due to the labyrinthine and quirky nature of the Italian legal process. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The emotional interplay between an arguing couple, in love but not happy with their relationship, is meant to be the sustaining force in this crime drama with little other action. Thomas (Christophe Malavoy) has been blackmailed into carrying a shipment of explosives in his Peugeot to Egypt, where the devices will be forwarded to guerrillas on Cyprus. He brings his lover Veronique (Victoria Abril) along for the dangerous ride from Switzerland to the south, knowing the explosives can be easily detonated by accident and enemy agents as well as government agents are out to capture him. Both protagonists have a short fuse themselves, and as they separate and then come back together, their final destination looms ever closer in more ways than one. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this series of views of what New York must be, rather than what it is, several Italians have landed in the city to encounter such diverse circumstances as a lack of political awareness, an abundance of drugs and sex, and the financial struggles of aspiring actors. Depending on the Italian's own interests and profession -- from music, to acting, to journalism -- the experience of New York is different, yet the city has been somewhat mythologized to fit a pattern that does not always ring true. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Set against the background of demonstrations in Bologna after a 1981 train-station massacre, the characters in this drama wander from one event in their lives to another without much direction or seeming purpose, but always with the greater social unrest as a backdrop. Two partners, Bruno (Victor Cavallo) and Marco (Pietro Valsecchi), are examples of an anarchy that can dominate life without necessarily being recognized. The partners' television station is rapidly losing money and they are desperately trying to keep it afloat: they dun their friends, they plan a kidnapping that they almost carry out, they steal some money from Bruno's mother and then gamble it into nothing, and they make a television commercial that bombs. Other characters include a gorgeous artist's model and a sculptor who is not exactly a paragon of staid behavior. As these individuals and their personalities unfold in quick-paced succession, the slippery hold they have over their own destinies defies any easy tightening up. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The story of a popular Greek hero Allessandro Panagulis (Stathis Giallelis) is the focus of this informative, feature-length version of a four-hour series. Panagulis tries to assassinate Prime Minister Papadopoulos in 1968, but is caught, tortured over an extended period of time, and then sentenced to death. Eventually, the Greek military junta decides not to carry out the death sentence because of a world-wide outcry for amnesty. That decision leaves Panagulis to suffer inhuman conditions in prison and to fail in several escape attempts. After five years have gone by, thanks to the efforts of family, friends, and the international community, including Oriana Fallaci (the Italian journalist who became his companion), Panagulis is released from prison. But his saga and his destiny do not end there, not by any means. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi