Bellucci brings spirit to ‘Malena’

Max Jacobson

Friday, Feb. 2, 2001 | 9:36 a.m.

Grade: ***

Starring: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico and Matilde Piana.

Screenplay: Giuseppe Tornatore.

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore.

Rated: R for sexuality/nudity, language and some violence.

Running time: 105 minutes.

Playing at: Regal Cinemas Village Square 18.

Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore is big on nostalgia.

In the highly acclaimed, semi-autobiographical "Cinema Paradiso," he waxes rhapsodic about how cinema can shape a young mind. His newest effort, "Malena," is more detached, but it is a visual stunner with subtly toned cinematography, and features Monica Bellucci, who some critics are calling the most ravishing Italian cinema star since Sophia Loren.

"Malena" is a winner in spite of a surfeit of forced sentimentality. It's a glossy entry about childhood, puppy love and redemption in wartime Sicily, and it may remind moviegoers of the American flick from the '70s, "The Summer of 42."

In that film, a teenager gets a sexual awakening from an older, mysterious woman. In "Malena," the emotions are more innocent and the events more timeless. War brings out sides of people never seen in peacetime, and "Malena's" plot, set against a backdrop that unfolds in fascist Italy, is really more about the vagaries of human nature than about an adolescent's ascent into manhood.

But when the film opens, the 13-year-old Renato Amoroso (Giuseppe Sulfaro), amid a group of his friends, eager waits for the beautiful Malena Scordia (Bellucci) to walk by. At first, the boys appear no different than any other ratpack of teenagers waiting to ogle and catcall at a passing beauty. And then the camera catches the rapture of Renato's face, and we know that his emotions are profound and genuine.

Malena is gorgeous, and as the camera, in a long tracking shot, watches her sway down a rundown looking beachfront path, it's clear that this actress is something special. Bellucci has the dark, sensuous beauty that Italian actresses are famous for, and the camera is as much in love with her as Renato. That is what it takes for a film such as this to succeed.

Much of the remainder of the film is light comedy, but somehow the director makes it clear that a storm is gathering. Malena is shadowed constantly by Renato for much of the rest of the film. There are comic sequences where the boy is punished for stealing his father's trousers for alteration, so he can appear more well dressed for his lady love, and also one where he falls from a balcony while spying on her.

Even funnier are the scenes where Renato is dealing with his own awakening eroticism. These scenes, which might be embarrassing in the hands of a less-skilled director than Tornatore, are quite amusing, and, no pun intended, really touching.

But more often, we learn that life is not so good for the mysteriously alluring Malena. Her husband is away fighting for the fascists, and she dances alone during the evenings, her sensuality wasted, as Renato watches. Whenever she walks through the town of Castelcuto, she is stared at shamelessly by husbands, and given venomous looks of hate and envy by the wives.

And later, when Malena's fortunes take a downturn, and she receives the terrible news that her husband has been killed in combat, her life begins slowly to unravel under her admirer's watchful gaze.

In a way, Malena's journey will remind some of Irene Papas' similar one in "Zorba the Greek." In that film Papas plays a young widow on the island of Crete, a place that was, at one time, murderously intolerant of a widow's needs.

Things aren't quite as dire with Italians, but Malena does have to endure a wealth of indignities as the film progresses. First, she is disowned by her father and shunned by the locals, even though she has committed no crime. Then she lands in court, quite penniless, and has to endure the amorous advances of a married barrister, who is twice her age.

Meanwhile Renato, who slowly morphs into Malena's guardian angel, watches all this in surreptitious silence, learning hard lessons about life in the process. And in the end, after the events in Castelcuto have come to an emotionally uplifting conclusion, a voice over for the now-grown Renato tells the audience, "I have loved many women ... but the only one I've never forgotten is the one who never asked, Malena."

Neither, in all probability, will the audience.