Massimo Bonetti 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

Franco Melis is utterly humiliated at being reduced to performing stand-up comedy before young unappreciative audiences who do not realize that he was once a great and highly respected star, and, desperate for a chance to reclaim his lost fame, he jumps at the opportunity to appear in a low-budget independent art film. It is being specially made for exhibition at the Venice Film festival. This Italian comedy chronicles the struggle of Melis, one that grows even more difficult in the face of a press that is more interested in the juicy details of his personal life than in his new movie. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this winsome romantic comedy, Andrea has been living a life completely lacking any form of romantic stimulation. He is a middle-aged schoolteacher, and his prospects in that department are dimming. One day, some workmen accidentally knock a hole in his apartment wall, permitting him a good (but concealed) view into the next apartment, which is occupied by an attractive female psychiatrist who is also single and lonely. Instead of doing something straightforward like asking the poor woman out, he jams a video camera into the hole and begins taking his dinners with her image projected on his television. Later, when one of her patients seeks refuge in her apartment, the by-now thoroughly love-struck schoolteacher falls in love with the new person's voice, thinking that it is that of the psychiatrist. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this film, Tolsoy's classic story Father Sergius is translated from 19th century Russia to 19th century Italy. As in the original story, Sergio (Julian Sands) is a nobleman and a military cadet who is posted in a position close to the (in this case Neapolitan) throne. He is about go through with an arranged marriage linking him with a higher-ranking noblewoman (Natassja Kinski) when he discovers that she has been the King's mistress. Disgusted, he renounces the world and becomes a churchman and a hermit. At his hermitage, he encounters a woman who considers any priest, especially an ascetic one, fair game. She attempts to seduce him and he nearly succumbs, narrowly avoiding that fate by chopping off a finger, in a scene harking back directly to the 1918 Russian silent classic Otets Sergey. Soon after that, he begins to acquire a reputation as a miracle worker. However, by now he has succumbed to his ever-present demon of sexual temptation in the form of a conniving young girl, and he knows he is not worthy of the adulation he is receiving. Devastated by his lapse, he leaves the hermitage and wanders around Italy as a homeless beggar. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this uneven feature that wavers between a political comedy and social drama, Camillo (Massimo Troisi) suffers from psychosomatic paralysis when his fiance Vittoria (Jo Champa) ends the engagement. Camillo is thrown in jail by the card-carrying fascist Orlando (Massimo Bonetti) when he falls for Orlando's sweetheart. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Originally made for television and then released theatrically, this 2 1/2-hour engrossing drama handles the subject of a group of mentally disturbed patients turned out of institutions that have been closed by the government, and left to fend for themselves in a large apartment building. The heroine Carlotta (Carlotta Wittig) is the woman who volunteers to work with them, partly out of a desire to escape her stultifying existence with an ambitious, career-oriented husband and to forget her problems at work. From that point onward, Carlotta's handling of her charges opens up her eyes and humanity. At the same time, the ex-patients in the building come to grips with a reality they can only partly capture. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In Tuscan lore, the evening of August 10th is la notte di san lorenzo (the night of the shooting stars). Each of these stars is believed to grant one wish. In this celebrated film by Italy's Taviani brothers, a woman asks for the words to tell her son about that same night during the last days of World War II. The Nazis occupied Italy and the fascists had mined her small Tuscan village of San Martino. Skeptical of the fascists' promise that all peasants will be safe in San Martino's cathedral, a group of villagers opt to leave and search for the Italian partisans and advancing American forces. Among those to depart is the woman, then only six years old. La Notte di San Lorenzo is the story of the villagers' remarkable exodus, the fate of those left behind, and the partisan struggle against fascism -- lyrically intertwined with their thoughts, loves, fears, and memories, as well as the fantasies of a young girl experiencing the tragedy she perceives to be her greatest adventure. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, Rovi