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Touches You

Memorable, crazy movie

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Ferzan Ozpetek's latest film is a modern ghost story, with its protagonist a young gay man (an actor-to-be), only this time, the sexual orientation drama leaves its spotlight to the haunting possession of a big family of dead theatrical actors who are trapped in an old house and disconnected from the real world, eager to find out who is the whistle-blower imputed to their tragic death during the WWII. MAGNIFICENT PRESENCE has a resourceful collection of fodder, such as romance, haunted house, ghost retribution, gay-transvestite subculture, war-time friction, light comedy and so on, two dozens of characters at hand to deploy with, but the film never quite find its centre of gravity, it leaves many loose ends which frustratingly no one minds to care. But eventually it can pass on as a moderate piece of work thanks to Elio Germano, this promising leading man in the recent Italian film scene, is the worthy saviour, he has won BEST ACTOR in Cannes 2010 for LA NOSTRA VITA (tied with Javier Bardem for BIUTIFUL). Elio owns the entire film, injecting a quirky laid-back energy into his character while grappling with heterogeneous accidents and happenings around him (an eerie transvestite/transsexual sweatshop with an obese kingpin is the wackiest among them all), his innocuous look and infantile personality renders the film a whiff of fairytale evocation. Anna Proclemer, a veteran Italian actress in her late 80s, takes on a key role which will solve all the mystery, has successfully exuded a fierce body of work in her limited stint. Otherwise, all the other supporting roles are more or less underdeveloped (including an ever-so-graceful Margherita Buy and a scene-stealer Mauro Coruzzi, a middle-aged transvestite). I have watched quite a lot films from Ozpetek (arguably he is my favourite current Italian director though he is Turkish), the best ones are LOOSE CANNONS (2010, 8/10), SATURN IN OPPOSITION (2007, 8/10), FACING WINDOWS (2003, 8/10) and THE IGNORANT FAIRIES (2001, 8/10), MAGNIFICENT PRESENCE by comparison, has to degrade itself as a less achiever, but against all odds, Elio Germano and Anna Proclemer are the newcomers on my top 10 list this year (BEST LEADING ACTOR, BEST S. ACTRESS).

The main Özpetek's achievement is making the film absolutely sensible on every second. With various layers of meanings, light and shadows, music, lots of curious details and quite natural behavior of the characters. I feel like I can enter Pietro's house, walk in the streets and buy a croissant that he baked. And let it better be an Almodòvar-style than Marshall- or Niccol-style. Viewers don't have to be stunned and blinded by movies. They just have to sense all hidden hints and allusions. Otherwise a bit at a time they turn into zombies packed with pop-corn.People should be more humane, sensitive and attentive to the world around us. And for this important reminding I'm really grateful - Özpetek, Teşekkürler!

This is the work of a mature storyteller who understands how to use film and music to lead the viewer into unusual and surprising places. There is much to delight an audience here, from subtle crossings and recrossings of genre boundaries, to moments of humor of an almost metaphysical dimension, to serious offerings of perspective on time, mortality, and history. I enjoyed particularly the way the filmmaker genially hoodwinks the viewer step by step into assenting to a story that becomes increasingly less predictable at the same time that its dependence on a sort of half-magical realism becomes more and more firmly established. The film does have an evident homoerotic subtext, and perhaps cultural 'flavor', but in a way that (for a change) does not limit its appeal. Rather, it reaches toward a kind universality that puts it in company with works of art that are for everyone whose heart and mind are in working order.

Even though some ideas can be appreciated, nothing is really new. A haunted house? Victims of Nazi racism? A difficult life for a gay young man? Mobbing in a solicitor's office? A thousand films have dealt with this in a more profound way.Adding a cameo with Platinette as a sort of a metaphysical seer surrounded by transvestites is not enough to turn a quite superficial story into an Almodòvar-style comedy.If the director wants to go all the way, then let him go all the way. But I have not seen the courage to push the story to its extreme possibilities; Ozpetek is satisfied with giving us a quite ordinary and reassuring fairy-tale with a sort of a happy ending.Let's just think about all the plot opportunities suggested by a group of people from the 1940s brought into the 2010s...all the director does is letting us know that the young son of the Turkish couple is still alive!Germano is on the scene from beginning to end, and I must say he is not bad at all. The actors around him, on the contrary, look stereotyped and without a real insight on their character. Definitely not the best I have seen from Ozpetek.