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Just perfect...

A different way of telling a story

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a wonderfully inventive romantic comedy set primarily within the Mole Antonelliana, a fabulous 19th Century building in Turin that since 2000 has housed the Italian National Museum of Cinema.The love story is a triangular dilemma in which a young woman loves two men and cannot force herself to choose one over the other. Amanda (Francesca Inaudi in her film debut) is a fast food clerk whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Her boyfriend Angelo (Fabio Troiano) is a car thief and control freak who seems more closely bound to his trio of henchmen than to Amanda. Though handsome and charming in his way, he never stays the night and forgets about their dates.Then one evening Amanda urgently needs a place to stay and accidentally bumps into Martino (Giorgio Pasotti), a solitary cinephile who works and lives in the Museum, located near the burger joint where she works. He takes her in, and things begin to change for everybody.Martino hardly talks at all. For him life on the silver screen is reality, so he sees little point in social ties or even leaving the Museum, except for trips to the fast food place when Amanda's on duty. He hates the food but buys it anyway as a pretext to be close to her. He is so unobtrusive that she had never before noticed him, but for Martino, she is the dear if distant object of his total affection. He actually creates a film about the history of Turin, embedded within which are shots of Amanda taken from a distance.Buster Keaton is Martino's role model for conducting a relationship with a woman. The Keaton formula for success in love necessitates a series of struggles, pratfalls and temporary defeats ending in shy, glancing kisses and handholding. When circumstances dictate that Amanda stay in hiding at the Museum for several days, Martino proceeds to approach her in the Keaton manner. This isn't exactly Amanda's cup of tea. Their cavorting over the ensuing days is one of the more endearingly humorous sequences in recent cinema.Once Amanda is reunited with Angelo, he senses immediately that something has changed. He cleans up his romantic act, but his reforms come too late to neutralize Amanda's affection for Martino. Inspired by watching Buster Keaton take on a gigantic man to win the favors of the woman he loves, Martino comes to challenge Angelo. Priding himself on being 'principled,' Angelo proposes that, rather than him and his gang beating Martino to a pulp, the two lovers should instead let Amanda choose between them and abide by her decision. But she will not choose, leading to some amusingly awkward dates for the trio.The story is narrated by a sage fellow (Silvio Orlando, never seen) who treats the viewer almost as a godlike partner, joining him in enjoying the follies of these three earthlings. Actually it's four: I've left out Amanda's roommate, Barbara (Francesca Picozza, also making her film debut here), a beautician with horrid hair and makeup who lusts after Angelo and believes that love is always a zero sum game.All four principal roles are well acted. Distinctions in personalities of the characters are made vividly clear. Miss Inaudi is captivating. She is poised - confident, relaxed and natural - in her movements and speech, and has ivory skin, warm almond eyes, and a sweet, simple little smile that charms. But for me there's nothing quite as sexy as a broken looking nose on a woman (I think of Kristin Scott Thomas, for example), and Inaudi's marvelous shnozz looks like she took a tough blow sometime long ago, though most likely this feature of her anatomy is genetic.In fact, the most striking member of the cast is the Museum itself. Built between 1863 and 1889 as a Synagogue, it is one of Europe's largest masonry buildings. The City of Turin has owned the place since before the turn of the last century, and it was entirely remodeled in the late 90s so that the Cinema Museum could be relocated from the Palazzo Chiablese to these more dramatic quarters.The place has been designed to function something like the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, though it's much larger and more grand. The dominant feature of the building is a giant cupola. Now a glass walled elevator takes visitors high up into the cupola, from where they can descend, strolling on an inclined walkway that spirals downward past numerous displays on movie themes. The main floor houses a richly upholstered theater for larger screen presentations.The love triangle is, of course, too unstable to last, and it doesn't. Things do sort themselves out in the end, in a manner that, in the final scene, poetically entwines the boundaries of reality and cinema in the most visually lovely manner. This film reflects an inspired level of imagination on the part of Davide Ferrario, who wrote as well as directed. Its self-styled connections to great cinema from the past are not for a moment pretentious. This is a respectful homage, and, besides that, it's one terrific movie. (In Italian) My rating: 8.5/10 (A-). (Seen on 04/28/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.

Monday May 23, 9:30pm Neptune Theater, Thursday May 26, 4:30pm The Harvard Exit"For one person to be happy, another has to cry." Ironic humor, pathos and a profound respect for tradition are the sentimental foundation for this tale of Martino and his secret love for Amanda, his fast food muse. He is night watchman at the Mole Antonelliana, the unrealized synagogue turned National Museum of Cinema in Turin. Bound to tradition, represented in his Grandfather, but searching for his own identity through the vast archives he is entrusted to protect, Martino lives in a cinema purgatory of his own creation, relating more to his world of gadgets, Buster Keaton and the Lumiere Brothers than living breathing humans. Our perspective is via his first person narrative, at times more naive and youthful than we might expect. She is the wannabe bad girl, submissive girlfriend of hoodlum biker Angel. Amanda is part Fendi model, part Flora from Botticelli's la Primavera, stuck in a greasy red and yellow tile burger hell. When she deep-fries her idiot bosses trousers while he's wearing them, she seeks refuge from the police at the Mole to the surprise and amazement of Martino. This film pays homage to film. The cavernous, sacred setting, almost another character itself, Martino's lofty digs, his awe of Amanda and her peril suggest The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A bicycle ride with his girl on the handlebars is straight out of Butch Cassidy. He revels in the world of slapstick comedy from the silent era and it's overt, swooning, tinted romance. The humorous and almost sad sound of the Banda Tradizionale repeated throughout the picture brings to mind Fellini's Amacord. Martino executes the physical pantomime and one perfect wheeling turn, as Chaplinesque as Johnny Depp's dance of the dinner roles from Benny and Joon. In the end, Amanda, torn between Angel, an unfaithful dog, and Martino, an adoring puppy, reflects, and decides, not to decide. The final homage is a blessing, "Two boys and one girl? I saw a French movie once." "Was the ending happy?" "They died." The biggest problem with such an obvious reference is the inevitable comparisons, these three lack the depth and freshness of characters from a legend of the New Wave they seek to imitate. While very sweet and oh so curious, Franchesca Inaudi's Amanda hasn't the fire and soul of Jeanne Moreau's Catherine. Giorgio Pasotti's Martino and Fabio Troiano's Angel are merely dim reflections of those they seek to imitate. But hey, Icarus was having a great time until... Written, produced and directed by journalist filmmaker Davide Ferrario, After Midnight is filled with pleasing and unusual images, the first and last we see, dust, floating in space. An iconic, towering, fifty foot image of Anita Ekberg, la Luna, again and again, as though the darkness of the world at night becomes the darkness of the cinema, Amanda's dream of freedom, running, as she sleeps safely in Martino's bed, the flickering nickelodeon, literally walking and living in the camera obscura, the closing aperture of the lens. Comedy is always there, thieves drowning a car alarm in a bucket of water, the handyman Ivan, dropping from the sky for his morning coffee, Martino using his tiny antique camera to film Amanda's underwear, drying on a clothesline, two-bit gangsters singing karioke, badly, and Martino's constant eating of apples, "I hate the double fry special. I like apples," and Amanda realizes he wasn't there for the burgers, his secret love revealed. "Always leave them wanting more," may always bring them back, but the unrealized also leads to frustration and disappointment. While on the right track, hopefully Ferrario learns and improves in subsequent films. Still, After Midnight is a sweet, endearing story of love, the movies, love and the movies and love of the movies. "Tales are like dust. Movies may end but cinema never."

This movie is totally charming. It is Italy's answer to "Amelie". The humor and romance keep you smiling and on the edge of your seat. Afterall the nerds finish first here. Lots of very modern backdrops and situations. This is a very fun story with a great ending. The movie is built on a story within a story within a story and is endless in it's interpretation of symbolism and our empathy with the characters live's. The two main characters are the misfits of society and somehow seem to find each other in spite of themselves. The absurd idea of the main character playing out his fantasies in real life from the inspiration of his works efforts are quite imaginative and constantly intriguing. To top it off, the story has a tragedy but the ending stays true for the romantic characters.

The 2004 new movie by one of the most intriguing Italian directors. Despite of a low budget and a not-famous cast (except for the narrating voice), this movie is purely entertaining and involving: fascinating sequences inside the Turin's wonderful Mole, actual venue of the most important Italian cinematographic museum. Not-so-profound characters and dialogs, and sometimes a bit of inaccuracy in playing, but a sincere view in the struggle for love, solitude and boredom. Very nice editing with sequences of early cinema movie clips, especially by Buster Keaton.