Don't Move (2004)

Really Surprised!

A lot of fun.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Timoteo is a successful surgeon and at the hospital one day his daughter comes for surgery right after suffering a motorcycle accident. He is married and has a beautiful wife but she doesn't want to have a baby because she is not ready. Timoteo is helped by a woman from a poor neighborhood and let him into her house to make a phone call, but he take advantage of her and has many adventures with her until he begins to fall in love with her and is willing to give up his wife and devote totally to her. Chance makes that his mistress remains pregnant but makes abortion and his wife also remains pregnant and now finds himself in a very difficult situation for he will have to choose between the two women.It's a good drama with a difficult role for Penelope Cruz but here show us that she is a great class actress and she is talented enough to be able to enter into character.The Director who also plays the main character gives evidence of a extraordinary talent because he manages to combine love with tragedy and done so well that this film is impossible not to move you.

Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto, who also directed) plays a surgeon whose car breaks down in a working class neighborhood of a great Italian city. Italia (Penelope Cruz) is a denizen of this part of town who lets Timoteo use her phone. She works as a cleaner of hotel rooms. She is crude, a little desperate, uneducated and so passive that she more or less allows Timoteo to rape her, a rape that she experiences without emotion, as something that society perhaps has taught her to accept as her due. Timoteo comes back a day or two later to apologize. He says he was drunk. He had drunk two vials of cold vodka while waiting for a mechanic to fix his car.Italia sniffs at this privileged man who took advantage of her. There is nothing she can do. Her word against his. Just move on and forget it. But part of her is wondering if there is more to his interest than the quick gratification of lust.He takes her again, this time though, it is clear that his passion is especially for her. It is something about her that turns him into a sexual beast, and not just the fact that she is a woman who cannot complain. It is interesting to note that when he returns and catches her carrying groceries home, she looks at him with some inquiry on her face, nothing more, no anger, no recriminations, no judgments. When he apologizes and says he was drunk, she swiftly picks up her groceries and turns away. She was looking for something deeper from him. She wants the reason that he raped her to be NOT that he was drunk but that he was so drawn to her that he couldn't help himself.It is during the third scene a few days later that she accepts his passion for her and finds some of her own. And it is after this third scene as she serves him spaghetti that he realizes that he loves her. The moment comes when he reaches for the bottle of beer on the table at the same time she reaches to pour it for him. They accidentally tip the bottle over, spilling the beer onto the table and floor, and their hands meet. He holds her index finger in his hand for a moment, and it is at that moment that he knows he loves her. And she sees it in his eyes.All of this is shown in flashback as Timoteo awaits the fate of his daughter who has suffered a massive head injury from a motorcycle accident and lies in a coma in his hospital. His meeting with Italia took place some fifteen years previously, or I should say it was a relatively brief but ultra passionate love affair that ended fifteen years in the past at the time his daughter, from the womb of his wife, Elsa (Claudia Gerini), was born. It was his passion for Italia that spilled over into Elsa that brought about the conception. Ironically--and this is part of the terrible tragedy of this story--Italia too becomes pregnant at nearly the same time. What Timoteo does not realize until it is too late is the depth of feeling that Italia comes to have for him. This is a love affair that, to quote the words of LA Times film critic Kevin Thomas, "makes most of today's screen romances seem undernourished by comparison." Penelope Cruz's performance is nothing short of spectacular. I invite the reader to view the special feature on the DVD in which she discusses her character with Castellitto. Here we can see the incredible passion and attention to detail that Cruz brings to her performance, and also that of Castellitto, who is outstanding both as an actor and a director. Cruz, whose first language is Spanish, must become this noble wretch of desperate woman who must speak Italian with a street accent and behave in way that belies her great beauty and the fine finish of her own character. It is a shame that most Americans only know Cruz from some television commercials and being Tom Cruise's ex. Penelope Cruz is without question--and she proves it in this deeply moving performance--to be one of the finest actresses working today.A couple of other points. Elsa knows of course that her husband had fallen in love with someone else. She can sense it in the new passion he brings to making love to her. She can deduce it in his absences from her and from the change in his manner. But she never says a word. That is interesting. Perhaps she knows it will pass. And it does, but not before Timoteo performs a "marriage ceremony" at a hotel restaurant near the place of Italia's birth with Italia, and with the "reheated soup" and the wine and cheese as witnesses, and not before he fantasizes aloud with her of leaving his wife and newborn child and going to some far off place with her alone. Only tragedy, it would appear, prevents his leaving Elsa for the love of his life.But time does heal this wound to their marriage, as Timoteo prays that time will heal his daughter. And the passion of yesteryear perhaps is the more glorious because, like a portrait, it does not age. And perhaps there is some solace in knowing that the love that one finds in a wife and a life's companion is different than that found in a fiery mania of long ago, but taken in total, no less deeply felt.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Penelope Cruz is an OK actress but most of her performances in Hollywood's movies were terrible .. and possibly all of her performances in English .. I particularly don't like her accent .. she is a beautiful woman though. I've seen her Spanish movies before she went to Hollywood and she was good .. maybe acting in English comes unnatural so she doesn't give any good performances .. anyway, she is not an Italian but apparently she speaks the language fluently.The movie is good in general and probably the best Italian movie of 2004. Her performance in the movie was very good and it was her best in my opinion (so far) .. she plays a desperate Italian woman in a natural-realistic way that you would think she has some Italian roots and maybe she dose, who knows?!Penelope Cruz was a perfect choice for that particular complicated role .. she empowered the movie with her amazing performance.Claudia Gerini was good but comparing to Cruz she is nothing .. Sergio Castellitto was good in the leading male role.The movie is deep and poetic .. it makes you value the family even more.Penelope Cruz is enough reason to watch the movie.

A doctor whose daughter is been operated as a matter of life or death begins to remember an old love affair that ended tragically. I'm sure that the feminist ones won't be very happy about the way this doctor met his lover (Penélope Cruz): he just rapes her. Is it possible to begin a relationship that way? Well, ask Mr. Castellito."Non te muovere" is a big flash-back that it would look more like a melodramatic serial if it wasn't for the fact that Castellito filmed it in an elegant way and with a steady hand. The truth is that this is the first decent movie that Penélope Cruz took part in since she (who knows why) became a Hollywood star. I've never liked her, but he does a good job in this movie (maybe she's a little bit vulgar, but that's something usual about her). Castellito plays the main role and directs the movie, and he proves he's a nice actor.So, if this is the best that Italian cinema can offer, then their situation is quite the same than here in Spain.*My rate: 6/10