adinutzza2001

'La finestra di fronte' is a movie about discovering what you really want in life and finding the courage to follow this dream. The movie transmits a lot of mixed emotions by means of two parallel stories, seeming similar at first, but which in the end prove to be each different and unique.

Giovanna is a married woman in her 30s with two children and finding herself in a confusing time of her life, having to deal with frustrations and disappointments. Her marriage seems to be falling apart while she starts fantasising about the neighbour she sees every day through her window. At this time a new event comes to influence her life: meeting an old man having lost his memory whom she takes for a few days in her house.

As the story unfolds, two forbidden love stories seem to come into shape. As Giovanna and Lorenzo, her neighbour, try to help the old man find his home, the passion they had created for each other while peering through each other's windows grows by each moment. At the same time, they start putting together the pieces to the puzzle of the old man's life and his forbidden uncompleted love for another man during the war.

Giovanna is oscilating between her passion for the mysterious neighbour and the responsibilities for her family, but in the end the old man proves to be the one holding the key to her confusion: "Don't be content to merely survive. You must demand to live in a better world not just dream about it". By discovering herself in his personality, Giovanna manages to realise what her real frustrations were and what was truly missing from her life. Through the metaphor of the window the movie describes the difficult attempt to understand our own frustrations and desires which might not always be what we think they are.

I'm not exactly a fan of action movies, but I am not against violent scenes and fights as long as there is a good plot with them. That's what I was expecting from this movie: an interesting storyline together with great film graphics. I only got the second part: the ultimate movie graphics of gratuitous violence, which in itself can't really make a movie worth watching for me.

During the whole movie I felt that everything was overly dramatized and over the top, which actually prevented one from caring for those characters. No character depth, all was black or white, the handsome brave Spartans and the evil Persian monsters. No real history reference to make the movie the least realistic: good and evil were simply hyperbolised up to the point the scenes became comic or grotesque. The movie had a great potential to build a good story over the historical background of the Spartans, but ended up totally predictable and with basically no plot. From the very start when including those monsters, it seemed this movie wasn't trying to portray any historical or human reality, but just shock and impress through its graphics. And apparently most of the people fell for it. Just as much a video game could do, but this is not what I am expecting from a movie.

Not to mention the sexual scenes (since this sells best and is in line with the good plot), the first one ridiculous in slow motion, the one with the hunchback simply gross. Then the very witty ending, when all 298 die (since basically we had only seen one dying through the whole slaughter until then, while another is gone to let spartans know the tragedy).

This film leaves one so totally numb to all the human suffering and so distant to the historical reality and the characters, that it equals playing a video game. If this is what people want to see: men slaughtered, blood and flesh to exclaim after it "That was really cool", why bother and make a film of it and not the ultimate playstation game?