Far from a simple, feel-good story of self-discovery, Facing Windows delivers a challenging examination of loneliness and human interaction.
Facing Windows(La finestra di fronte)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Italy, Turkey, Portugal · 2003
Rated R · 1h 46m
Director Ferzan Özpetek
Starring Massimo Girotti, Raoul Bova, Filippo Nigro, Giovanna Mezzogiorno
Genre Drama, Romance
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Giovanna is overburdened by work and a dull marriage; her husband’s job is precarious, and she is gaining interest in a neighbor. Then her husband brings home an elderly man with vague memories from 1943. As she cares for the man, she begins to reflect on her own life, and grows closer with the handsome man across the street…
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Only partially succeeds in interweaving questions of family loyalty with historical memory and the fate of Italian Jews in WW2.
New York Daily News by Jack Mathews
Ozpetek moves things along at a snail's pace and lays the sentiment down thickly. But it's a potent tale, wonderfully acted by Mezzogiorno and Massimo Girotti as the old man.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Probably best skipped - unless you have a penchant for shallow, "comfortable" foreign films that offer obvious messages and never attempt to challenge the viewer.
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Blends past and present to draw some utterly stupefying parallels.
Blends history and mystery into an entertaining, if somewhat slight, romance.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak
Istanbul-born director Ferzan Ozpetek has outdone himself with this wise and ruminative mystery about memory, unfulfillment and yearning.
Structurally, it's ambitious, but emotionally the movie never quite connects, spending so much time laboring over its parallel storytelling and its cosmic connections that the characters remain at arm's length, as intangible as reflections in glass.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Despite its surreal touches and an improbable story that piles on the metaphors, the movie, which has a rich, honey-dripping score by Andrea Guerra, maintains a tone of refined heart-tugging realism.
Gets off to a worthy start, but falls apart about halfway through.
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