European Films

Surely you have seen his type; fiftyish, dark rimmed spectacles, well dressed but not flashy, inconspicuously sitting in the lobby of an unnamed hotel, probably with his legs crossed, looking in the daily newspaper for the chess problem of the day. Have you ever wondered what this unremarkable person does for a living? What kind of emotions this person might have? Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino has the answer; the protagonist of his Le conseguenze dell’amore’ (The Consequences of Love) is just such a person. Sorrentino’s carefully observed drama peels away the layers of mystery surrounding this apparently dull man with such expertise that it will make you alternatively tingle and cringe in your chair until the understated coda delivers the final blow. Despite two superfluous sub-plots, Le conseguenze dell’amore is clearly the work of a writer-director who could quickly ascend to the upper regions of European filmmaking.

 

Our mystery man is called Titta di Gerolamo (Toni Servillo), but, as he says himself, the only frivolous thing about him is his name. Divorced from his wife and children, he lives a lonely life in an anonymous hotel in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. He works little; once or twice a week he goes out to deposit the contents of a suitcase at a local bank. His life seems to be as calm as a pond on a windless day. Before this would become an utterly boring film however, life a large and heavy stone into that pond of languid tranquillity. The result of that throw ripples through di Gerolamo’s life long after the stone has hit the bottom.

 

Sorrentino, for whom this is only his second feature length film, approaches Titta as one would any stranger in a hotel lobby, observing him but not asking him any questions. As we get to know him and his surroundings a little bit better, we come to understand more about the man with the inexpressive face. Servillo does an excellent job of hiding behind a straight poker face yet telling us so much; there are two beautifully filmed little sequences in which a small twitch of his lips tell us that his face is, in fact, not immobile and that the owner must thus have emotions like the rest of us.

 

Sorrentino is clearly more interested in making a thorough character study of Titta rather than a flashy thriller, though the latter half of the film has some elements of that genre too. The violence and accidents that are part of this semi-thriller are the weakest scenes of Le conseguenze dell’amore. The film would have benefited from trimming all the scenes that do not bear directly on Titta, his reasoning and his actions.

 

As it stands there are two small subplots, one involving the barmaid from the hotel and another two Sicilian visitors, that distract too much from the main narrative enigma that is Titta himself. Sorrentino is at his most  effective when he creates an atmosphere of ominous dread by simply waiting and registering everyday actions. The constant floating movements of the camera and the modern musical score underline Titta's detachment from his surroundings; he  would like to be invisible but for that he would have to be loved and not be alone. Everything seems calm on the surface, but a twitch of the lips might cause an eruption of temperament which can not be reversed.

 

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