Don't Move [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Penelope Cruz, Sergio Castellitto: DVD

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Based on a novel by his wife Margaret Mazzantini, actor-turned-director Sergio Castellitto's DON'T MOVE is a strikingly accomplished drama that features an unforgettable performance by Penelope Cruz. Successful doctor Timoteo (Castellitto) is shocked to discover that his fifteen-year-old daughter has been in a life-threatening motorcycle accident. As a fellow surgeon performs a dangerous procedure on her brain, Timoteo recalls a passionate affair he had before his daughter was born. He met the woman, Italia (Cruz), when his car broke down on the outskirts of the city. After an initial first encounter that resulted in Timoteo's brutally raping the hapless Italia, he found himself shunning his beautiful wife Elsa (Claudia Gerini) and returning to visit Italia more and more frequently. What began as a dark, shameful outlet for his disgust with his bourgeois existence grew to become a genuine love that would change Timoteo's--and Italia's--life forever. Dripping with sensuality, Castellitto's sprawling drama captures the exhilarations and frustrations of a man who is unable to come to grips with his ever-narrowing path in life. Yet DON'T MOVE belongs to Cruz, who delivers a heartbreaking performance that is devastating in its honesty and sadness.

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow start, worth persevering with it, 20 Nov 2005

By	Budge Burgess (Kilmarnock, Scotland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Slow moving, enigmatic, at times almost labyrinthine in its narrative and emotional structure, "Don’t Move" ("Non Ti Muovere") is based on a novel by Margaret Mazzantini and is most memorable for the performance of Penelope Cruz.

Mazzantini collaborated with her husband, Italian actor Sergio Castellitto, in writing the screenplay - Castellitto directs and stars as a married surgeon whose life takes sudden focus when his teenage daughter is rushed into theatre at his hospital, suffering from critical head injuries after a motorcycle accident. The film, in fact, opens with a stunning overhead shot of a road accident at a crossroads, the rain falling steadily. As the father waits, hopeless and redundant, his colleagues fight to save the girl's life, his attention is caught by a female figure outside the hospital window. He drifts back to another crossroads in his life.

Penelope Cruz plays a dowdy immigrant, an ill-educated peasant in cheap make-up, cheap outfits, bad teeth, and inelegant walk, eking out a living in a foreign country. She has been a victim all her life and now, a charitable act on her part leads to her being raped by Castellitto. Cruz has learned to expect nothing better from life. But their relationship continues, takes shape, takes form, moves from the physical to the emotional.

It's a tale of class, of status, of obligation. It's also a tale of love. Though she has the minor role, it is a film held together by Cruz. I found it difficult to have any sympathy for the surgeon - he seems to embody a cold, male self-importance and self-justification, a man who can (well, he's a surgeon) act like god and explain away rape as passion and as worthy because it has a positive outcome.

The rape is an act - there is no attempt to sensationalise, glamorise, or titillate. Cruz plays her victim's role with outstanding sympathy - she is at first perfunctory, almost instrumental in her emotional responses. She grows throughout the role, emerges as a fully fledged character and not just a vehicle for male lusts. The tale of tragic romance is powered almost entirely by her performance - without her, the film dissolves into a tame tale of adultery. Watch for the imagery - Cruz is the earth, the wife is the sea, the surgeon … well, I leave that to your imagination and judgement.

The DVD offers some interesting extras on the making of the film and an interview (in English) with Cruz. It's a good film, visually stunning in places, with excellent performances from its cast. Cruz is the star, and will doubtless give the production commercial clout. But it can be slow and confusing in places. It's a film with which you should persevere - it's a film you'll almost certainly remember, but whether or not it's one you could say you enjoyed?

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Burning Love, 23 Mar 2006

By	MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Dr. Timoteo Rossi (Sergio Castellitto) has the perfect life: a beautiful wife Elsa (the glorious Angela Finocchiaro), a smart daughter and a medical practice that is the envy of all his friends.
There is only one problem, though he loves his daughter, he's not really in love with Elsa because he can't get Italia (Penelope Cruz) out of his mind, thoughts and even actions. Everything reminds him of Italia and his brief but fervent affair with her.
Castellitto, who also directs here, has fashioned his film with more than a nod towards Roberto Rossellini and the Italian Neo-Realism films of the 1950's: Cruz is even made up to look like a new millennium Sophia Loren. But that is about the only similarity between the two for Cruz has a tenderness and vulnerability as Italia that Loren never had and that Cruz has never, up to this point, exhibited on the screen.
Cruz's Italia is average looking and takes nothing for granted: she is content with having only as much as Timoteo is willing to give her, as she says to him: "I don't care if you come back once a week, once a month or once a year...just come back."
There is a heart-breaking scene close to the end of the film between Italia and Timo that is performed only in close-ups: the camera moving back and forth between the two, which is a textbook treatise on film acting: eyes, face, eyes... that says volumes without any dialogue.
Castellitto, so good as an actor in "Mostly Martha," has directed a film with a master's eye. His scene compositions are beautiful and his astute sensibilities, particularly in the scenes between Timo and Italia, mark him as a director in possession of uncommon grace and a transcendant inner fire that hopefully will stay light for many films to come.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and haunting performance by Penelope Cruz, 8 Aug 2007

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto, who also directed) plays a surgeon whose car breaks down in a working class neighborhood of a great Italian city. Italia (Penelope Cruz) is a denizen of this part of town who lets Timoteo use her phone. She works as a cleaner of hotel rooms. She is crude, a little desperate, uneducated and so passive that she more or less allows Timoteo to rape her, a rape that she experiences without emotion, as something that society perhaps has taught her to accept as her due. Timoteo comes back a day or two later to apologize. He says he was drunk. He had drunk two vials of cold vodka while waiting for a mechanic to fix his car.

Italia sniffs at this privileged man who took advantage of her. There is nothing she can do. Her word against his. Just move on and forget it. But part of her is wondering if there is more to his interest than the quick gratification of lust.

He takes her again, this time though, it is clear that his passion is especially for her. It is something about her that turns him into a sexual beast, and not just the fact that she is a woman who cannot complain. It is interesting to note that when he returns and catches her carrying groceries home, she looks at him with some inquiry on her face, nothing more, no anger, no recriminations, no judgments. When he apologizes and says he was drunk, she swiftly picks up her groceries and turns away. She was looking for something deeper from him. She wants the reason that he raped her to be NOT that he was drunk but that he was so drawn to her that he couldn't help himself.

It is during the third scene a few days later that she accepts his passion for her and finds some of her own. And it is after this third scene as she serves him spaghetti that he realizes that he loves her. The moment comes when he reaches for the bottle of beer on the table at the same time she reaches to pour it for him. They accidentally tip the bottle over, spilling the beer onto the table and floor, and their hands meet. He holds her index finger in his hand for a moment, and it is at that moment that he knows he loves her. And she sees it in his eyes.

All of this is shown in flashback as Timoteo awaits the fate of his daughter who has suffered a massive head injury from a motorcycle accident and lies in a coma in his hospital. His meeting with Italia took place some fifteen years previously, or I should say it was a relatively brief but ultra passionate love affair that ended fifteen years in the past at the time his daughter, from the womb of his wife, Elsa (Claudia Gerini), was born. It was his passion for Italia that spilled over into Elsa that brought about the conception. Ironically--and this is part of the terrible tragedy of this story--Italia too becomes pregnant at nearly the same time. What Timoteo does not realize until it is too late is the depth of feeling that Italia comes to have for him. This is a love affair that, to quote the words of LA Times film critic Kevin Thomas, "makes most of today's screen romances seem undernourished by comparison."

Penelope Cruz's performance is nothing short of spectacular. I invite the reader to view the special feature on the DVD in which she discusses her character with Castellitto. Here we can see the incredible passion and attention to detail that Cruz brings to her performance, and also that of Castellitto, who is outstanding both as an actor and a director. Cruz, whose first language is Spanish, must become this noble wretch of desperate woman who must speak Italian with a street accent and behave in way that belies her great beauty and the fine finish of her own character. It is a shame that most Americans only know Cruz from some television commercials and being Tom Cruise's ex. Penelope Cruz is without question--and she proves it in this deeply moving performance--to be one of the finest actresses working today.

A couple of other points. Elsa knows of course that her husband had fallen in love with someone else. She can sense it in the new passion he brings to making love to her. She can deduce it in his absences from her and from the change in his manner. But she never says a word. That is interesting. Perhaps she knows it will pass. And it does, but not before Timoteo performs a "marriage ceremony" at a hotel restaurant near the place of Italia's birth with Italia, and with the "reheated soup" and the wine and cheese as witnesses, and not before he fantasizes aloud with her of leaving his wife and newborn child and going to some far off place with her alone. Only tragedy, it would appear, prevents his leaving Elsa for the love of his life.

But time does heal this wound to their marriage, as Timoteo prays that time will heal his daughter. And the passion of yesteryear perhaps is the more glorious because, like a portrait, it does not age. And perhaps there is some solace in knowing that the love that one finds in a wife and a life's companion is different than that found in a fiery mania of long ago, but taken in total, no less deeply felt.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Penelope Cruz like you've never seen her before...
Don't Move is outrageous and totally unbelievable and its full of unbridled histrionics, but luckily Penelope Cruz's impassioned performance as an unglamorous, multi-ethnic refuge... Read more

Published on 31 Jul 2006 by M. J Leonard

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