Luisa Ranieri Movies

This deeply nostalgic, operatic family drama represented a labor of love for its director, Pupi Avati (The Story of Boys and Girls). A thinly-disguised autobiographical account, it dramatizes the director's formative years growing up in early 1950s Italy. As events both significant and insignificant transpire with his family, teenager Bep (Neri Marcore, Avati's onscreen surrogate) spends many memorable hours spying on the customers of a local bar from his bedroom window. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Three of the world's most gifted filmmakers offer their own unique perspectives on love and lust in this omnibus film. The initial episode, "The Hand," was directed by Wong Kar-Wai, and tells the story of Zhang (Chang Chen), a young, virginal dressmaker's assistant who finds it difficult to control his desire when he is sent to the home of Hua (Gong Li), a beautiful and refined prostitute, for a fitting. Steven Soderbergh directed the film's second story, "Equilibrium," in which Nick Penrose (Robert Downey Jr.) spends a session with his analyst (Alan Arkin) discussing a recurring dream of a beautiful naked woman in his apartment, but he keeps wandering off on tangents about alarm clocks and hair loss. Finally, Italian virtuoso Michelangelo Antonioni brings his short story The Dangerous Thread of Things to the screen, a story of a jaded couple, Christopher (Christopher Buchholz) and Chloë (Regina Nemni), whose relationship comes to a crossroads when both husband and wife become infatuated with the same woman, Linda (Luisa Ranieri). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide