FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Paolo Sorrentino - The Consequences Of Love

Living Death in Bern. Here comes an impressively stylish and headstrong love story from Italy by 35-year-old Paolo Sorrentino. Italian cinema, which has surrendered to bombast and pathos for so long, also needs this fresh cell therapy as urgently as a patient in want! At the center is a deadly serious, expressionless mafioso who basically leads the life of a modern manager-type: Far away from home as a permanent hotel guest, trapped in a labyrinth of fear. Everything here seems immovable, in limbo and of pure elegance. Plus a sound design that seems like nothing is real, just hallucination. Toni Servillo plays Titta with his tense, sensitive facial expression. Titta has been living like a ghost in this luxury hotel in Switzerland for ten years. Dressed like a man of the world, stylishly smoking, quite the bourgeois Italian, he pays all the bills on time and seems to have nothing, but nothing at all to do. The hotel staff are fascinated by him as he floats through the property's corridors without even saying a single greeting. Titta shows no reaction, just stares past his counterpart. In the bar he always takes his usual corner seat and drinks alone. He rejects any conversation with other guests (the funniest moment is when two backpacker girls occupy his chair). Titta's hotel room with its beige and brown tones seems like a depressing exile in which he spends his evenings alone. But Titta has a gun. Once he throws it on the bed, then his jacket next to it. The camera remains on the gun until we have actually noticed it. Every week Titta receives a mysterious suitcase full of dollars from a mysterious woman wearing sunglasses. Without asking questions, he takes the suitcase in his silver BMW to the Swiss bank, where he demands that the sum be counted by hand (Titta believes that the day a machine will replace man will be a bad day). Finally Titta gets a visit from two Cosa Nostra killers. The secret of his existence is revealed in this way. But the heart of the movie is a love story. At the bar works a beautiful waitress, Sofia (Olivia Magnani), who undresses right in front of him. She greets Titta, who refuses this greeting every time. Finally, she addresses him. She does that very definitely; it's a complaint. Everything about this confusing and incredibly intense story about exile, captivity and escape appears hyperreal due to the dreamlike image compositions and the fascinating sound. The only person who is really interested in Titta is Sofia behind the bar. How she shows her shy love, but also simply weakens his inclination to self-pity and vanity, that is the most beautiful thing I have seen for a long, long time! Titta has long since resigned himself to his desperation and damnation, even let himself be taken by it. Sofia wakes him up and shows him that there is another feeling. The consequence of love, says Titta Sofia, is dangerous. He shall be proved right...