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Italy, France · 2012
1h 55m
Director Marco Bellocchio
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Alba Rohrwacher, Toni Servillo, Maya Sansa
Genre Drama
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The true story of the case of Eluana Englaro, a girl who was in an irreversible coma for 17 years, is considered through several intertwined stories of people related to the events. Themes of life and death are threaded through each narrative as we follow the political, medical, and religious implications that arose resulting from the decision to euthanize Englaro.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
If Dormant Beauty does not rank among Mr. Bellocchio’s best movies, it nonetheless still occasionally shows him at his best. His eye for the latent beauty and evident absurdity of Italian life remains acute, as does his appreciation for vivid performance.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Refusing to offer easy answers or perspectives, Dormant Beauty is directed in such a way it doesn’t need to take a clear-cut position on the question, because like all the director’s work it has no concern with convincing people of anything, but a great deal of interest in illuminating contemporary Italian society.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
Swift and often compelling, it’s also blessedly unbiased.
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Though the movie eschews facile sloganeering, few of its characters or narrative threads are able to develop beyond their function as metaphors.
"Beauty" has numerous scenes of enormous power, though removing one unnecessary plot strand would allow deeper probing elsewhere.
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
The film puts too many elements into play, which means it ends up darting hopelessly between a series of underdeveloped storylines.
Bellocchio counters these flaws with an energetically combative aesthetic (he makes you feel like you’re riding out a sociopolitical tempest, careening between perspectives) and an overarching humanism that gives equal weight to the many feelings stirred up by this hot-button situation.
Dormant Beauty always comes back to the difficult decisions that family members have to make for each other, contrasted with the huffiness of outsiders who try to project their own beliefs onto someone else’s business.
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
The film’s well-written, beautifully performed (not least from Huppert, who’s typically stunning as her icy, grief-stricken matriarch, and the moving Servillo, of “Il Divo” and “Gomorrah” fame), and nicely made, if a good 15 minutes overlong.
Village Voice by Stephanie Zacharek
Subtle emotional intelligence has always distinguished Bellocchio's filmmaking, and Dormant Beauty is constructed from fine-grained layers of it, the filmmaker's equivalent of a master cabinetmaker's craft.
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