Valeria Golino Movies

This passionate romance from Italian director Giuseppe Piccioni concerns Guido Montani (Valerio Mastandrea) , a top-tiered writer and the recipient of an elitist literary award. Motivated by his towering success, Guido taps into a lifelong aspiration to learn to swim, and enrolls in swimming lessons at a local pool. In so doing, his path criss-crosses with that of Giulia (international star Valera Golino) a beautiful woman who projects the utmost grace and finesse in the water. A relationship gestates between the two, but Guido senses that Giulia is concealing unusual and dark secrets about her past - beginning with the fact that she is an ex-convict. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A handful of semi-professional musicians struggle to make a name for themselves in this nostalgic comedy-drama set in Italy in the mid-seventies. Faustino (Antimo Merolillo) is a would-be jazz guitarist who has just graduated from school and is looking for a gig, at least in part because he's trying to avoid the military draft. If he can get local promoter Raffaele (Ernesto Mahieux) to sign him to a contract, Faustino can tell the draft board that he's a professional supporting his widowed mother with his career in music, but getting Raffaele to make a deal is proving difficult. Faustino plays part time with a local band led by hard-drinking Mimmo Falasco (Toni Servillo), but when Augusto Riverberi (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a once-famous bandleader looking to make a comeback, arrives in town, Raffaele pulls some strings and gets Faustino a job as Riverberi's assistant. In need of a singer, Faustino and Raffaele persuade Riverberi to hire a vocalist named Gerry Como (Peppe Servillo), and the first few dates of the tour go well as Riverberi entertains the crowds and juggles romances with Faustino's mother (Lina Sastri) and a lovely small-town hairdresser (Valeria Golino). But when Raffaele double-crosses Riverberi and runs off with the band's money, Faustino begins to wonder if he'll ever make good as a musician. Lascia Perdere, Johnny! (aka Don't Waste Your Time, Johnny!) was the first directorial credit for veteran actor Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who also co-stars as the bandleader Riverberi. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Actress-cum-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's sophomore feature, the comedy-drama Les Actrices (Le reve de la nuit d'avant), follows the trials and travails of Marcelline (Tedeschi), a tense and jittery stage thesp whose personal and professional life threaten to fall into pieces simultaneously. On a personal level, Marcelline hits the midpoint of her life, hears her biological clock ticking, and longs desperately for a child. At work, Marcelline's inability to find the core of her character, Natalia Petrovna, in a production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country only causes her emotional tension to double. In time, she regresses into such a basket case that she can barely respond to the stage director's query about whether she is right or left-handed. Marcelline's natty and overanxious mother (Marisa Borini, Tedeschi's mother in real life) weighs heavily on her as well, pressuring her constantly about the need to find an appropriate suitor before time runs out; instead, Marcelline finds herself drawn helplessly to Eric (Louis Garrel) a sexy young actor in the production - who, without her knowledge, nurtures reciprocal affections. This parallels the events that befall Petrovna in Turgenev's play, and indeed, at one point the spirit of Petrovna (Valeria Golino) appears to Marcelline for much-needed counsel. Meanwhile, as Marcelline weathers her own personal crises, one of her friends, Nathalie (Noemie Lvovsky) - the assistant to the play's director - struggles with her offstage lack of fulfillment as a wife and mother. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A group of students are eager to get an education while on a class trip in this comedy from Italy. Salvatore (Vincenzo Salemme) and Archimede (Massimo Boldi) are two teachers at a private high school for boys who have arranged for their students to travel to Spain for a learning holiday. While Salvatore and Archimede have academics in mind, their charges are more interested in meeting girls and having fun, and when they discover Maggie (Daryl Hannah), an American teacher, is leading a group of female students from a school in California through the same part of Spain, the goal becomes ditching their teachers and having a party with the girls. Meanwhile, Salvatore and Archimede keep getting into hot water of their own, especially after they become romantic rivals, each hoping to win the hand of lovely Maggie. Ole! was released in Italy in time for the Christmas season, an annual tradition for Massimo Boldi comedies (though this project found him paired with Vincenzo Salemme rather than his usual sidekick, Christian De Sica). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A determined mother struggles to raise her adopted son with love and understanding as the disapproving eyes of her boyfriend and mother weigh heavily on her conscience in this drama from director Antonio Capuano. Mario (Marco Grieco) is a rebellious youngster who has been taken from his abusive mother and placed in the care of Giulia (Valeria Golino) and Sandro (Andrea Renzi). Though the maternal Giulia has vowed to treat her young charge as her own blood and lovingly accepts all of the challenges generally associated with foster parenting, her partner, Sandro, is resentful of the young Mario and views his foster child's presence as little more than an unwelcome disruption. Defying the vocal objections of her outspoken mother, Giulia holds steadfast to her pledge of giving the troubled working-class misfit a stable childhood in her comfortable, middle-class home. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Bernard Rose directed this look at the sordid underside of the film business and one man's attempts to come to terms with his mortality in this fallen world, in a story loosely based on Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Beckman (Danny Huston), a hot-shot talent agent at the powerful Media Talent Agency, unexpectedly dies, and soon his colleagues are scrambling among themselves over the shards of Ivan's leftover business, with Barry Oaks (Adam Krentzman) eager to take over representation of Don West (Peter Weller), a major star Ivan signed shortly before his death. Everyone assumes that Ivan died of a drug overdose, but as viewers watch his last few days in flashback, they learn that Ivan was diagnosed with a severe case of lung cancer as he was trying to put together a deal with firebrand director Danny McTeague (James Merendino), actress Constanza Vero (Valeria Golino), and West. As the dynamic businessman is forced to confront his mortality, he is dragged into a binge of booze, drugs, and women with West, while he also tries to decide how to confront his family and his girlfriend Charlotte (Lisa Enos) with the grim news about his health. Ivansxtc. (To Live and Die in Hollywood) was shot using digital video equipment and a skeleton crew -- according to Rose, a reaction in part to studio interference over his 1997 adaptation of another Tolstoy work, Anna Karenina. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

One day Jack (Matthew Lillard) shows up at the antiques-laden warehouse apartment of Max (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Jamie (Valeria Golino), two ruthless low-level criminals with higher aspirations than the two-bit thieving they do now. Jack insists he's Max's brother, but Jamie, whose hobby is collecting poison, has her doubts. When Max arrives to find Jack tied to a chair, it's revealed that Jack isn't Max's brother -- he's a hoodlum with a line on a briefcase with a million dollars and a priceless, mysterious antiquity called the Spanish Judges; all he wants is Max and Jamie's help recovering the loot. But when the plan goes awry, and violently so, suddenly loyalties and motives are called into question. Was this Jack's plan all along, or did Jamie have something to do with it? ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide

Tony Gerber made his directorial debut with this anthology film, a comedy-drama that opens with a 1950s black-and-white newsreel focusing on the ethnic diversity of New York City. This multicultural mix is dramatized in five interlinked tales set in each of NYC's five boroughs on a hot summer day: In Manhattan, a Soho fashion designer on the brink of eviction begins a relationship with a Japanese department store buyer. In the Bronx, the daughter of a Puerto Rican baker thinks her lover can provide a portal to a glamorous, successful life. For the Queens segment, Gerber expanded his 1995 short film, A Small Taste of Heaven, about a gambling Romanian butcher's apprentice who dreams of someday purchasing a nice suburban house for his wife. On Staten Island, the wife of an Indian limousine driver is treated like a servant by her husband's visiting brother. In Brooklyn, a West Indian man makes the mistake of pawning his wife's family heirlooms to buy a Cadillac. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Set upon the island of Cyprus, a pair of good friends who run a prominent nightclub/prostitution ring find their good life about to come unraveled when they receive a damning film that reveals them having disturbingly kinky sex. These acts happened years ago when both friends were migrant workers in the Persian Gulf. The man who sent them the tape is a greedy American who participated in the shenanigans and now wants a piece of their lucrative club. His demands have tragic repercussions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A successful Italian man living in Paris returns to Italy to exact financial revenge upon his cruel half-brothers in this Italian-French drama. Gabriele now runs a successful antique appraisal company in Paris. He lives in a fine, automated apartment which his lover Claire compares to an impenetrable box. Gabriele is haunted by his troubled youth, which is presented through flashbacks. He and his baby brother Martino were bastards. Their father was the wealthy Giancarlo Giannini who already had a family. After Gabriele's feisty and independent mother died, he and his brother were taken into their father's home. Though living in luxury's lap, the now adolescent Gabriele was mistreated by his two hateful half-brothers. He eventually ran away from that house. This is the motive behind his revenge. But to get it he must return home and therefore, must face his past. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide