Amelio has tried to do moral cinema, a difficult task anywhere. He's done it for four decades with actors like Lo Verso and Volonté (and plenty of non-professionals) who always have a way of showing, not just what they're doing, but what's being done to them. Isn't this the way that most of life is lived?
Amelio has the eye of an aesthete, but he's is not seduced by the bella figura of language or formal official behavior. Buildings that look elegant are shown to be out of scale. Beauty can easily be a veil for cunning. It can also be shattered by pain. Petty crimes can be conceived and committed in august universities or sacred chapels.
by David D'Arcy for GreenCine
