442 - Malèna, Italy, 2000. Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore.

Sunday, March 17, 2018

442 - Malèna, Italy, 2000.  Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore.

From now on I'll be at your side.  Forever.  I promise.
Just give me time to grow up.

So says Renato.  To Malena.  In his heart.  In his dreams.

But Malena does not know Renato exists.

When she exits her home and passes him on the doorsteps, she says, "Little boy, let me get by."

Malena loves her husband.  Nino Scordia.  But Nino is away at war.  In northern Africa.  So Malena spends her time taking care of the home and caring for her father.

Malena's father lives alone.  She walks to him each day.  People watch.  People talk.

Her father is a local teacher.  He is Renato's teacher.  He is hard of hearing, and the boys make fun of him in the classroom.  They stand and point as if asking to go to the restroom.  But then they say things such as, "May I sleep with your daughter Malena?"

He thinks they have said, "May I go to the restroom," so he says Yes.  The boys laugh.

Malena is from another village.  That is the first count against her.  The local villagers suspect her.  She is not from around her.  She is an outsider.  She must be up to no good.

Malena also keeps to herself.  She minds her own business.  This is the second count against her.  Because people do not know her, they invent stories about what she must be doing behind closed doors.  When she lets her hair hang down.  They gossip.

Malena's husband is not around to defend her.  She is vulnerable to their slander.

But Malena has a third count against her.  She is pretty.  She has an attractive figure.  And that is the clincher.  When she walks down the street the men look at her.  The boys look at her.  Heads turn.  Eyes look.  Hearts beat.  Imaginations run wild.  Mouths comment.  Lips whistle.

The townswomen hate Malena.  She distracts their husbands.  She steals their men.  She is a homewrecker.

So they say.

Renato is coming of age.  He has just been given a new bicycle.  This elevates him in the eyes of some local boys so that he may now join their group.

He joins them.

They meet on the street by the sea and sit on the parapet.  What are we doing?  Shh!  If you want to join our group, be quiet and watch.

Renato sits quietly and watches.

Malena walks by.

The boys sit in silence and awe.  Renato feels what they are feeling.  His first encounter with a beautiful woman.  The awakening of maturity.  Post-puberty.  The onset of adolescence.  The becoming of a man.

Renato is smitten.

He does not consider that many men stand in line ahead of him, let alone many boys.  He imagines himself Malena's personal protector.  Her guardian angel.  Someone to watch over her.

He goes to church.  Selects a saint.  Lights a candle.  Makes a deal.  I will come and light a candle and pray to you every day if you protect her.

When men catcall in the streets, he resents them.  Two men walk out of their shop and make comments.  He throws a rock and breaks the glass window.  That will teach you to talk about her that way.

Renato goes to Malena's house.  He watches through the windows.  He finds a hole in the wall.  His own personal lookout.  Or look-in.

Renato is innocent.  He does not perceive himself as a stalker or a peeping tom.  He sees himself as that angel.

And through his eyes we discover that Malena is also innocent.  She takes care of her father.  She listens to musical records.  She dances alone.  She waits for her husband. 

When Renato engages in his own boyhood fantasies, he does it through the eyes of the films he has seen.  We see the films.  Classic films.  Remade with Malena's and Renato's faces in place of the original stars.  We are in Giuseppe Tornatore's world.  A world where the memory of films is a part of the collective unconsciousness.  The vocabulary of life.

Renato is also not innocent.  In that he youthfully, naively is doing the same things as the rest of the townsmen.  He steals a pair of panties from her clothesline.  Takes them home.  Sleeps with them.  His father finds them.  Beats him.  Nails his door shut with wood planks.  Tells him he cannot leave.

His mother decides he is demon possessed.  She has him exorcised.  Then his father decides to give in and help Renato grow up with a rite of passage.  He takes him to the rite of passage.  He gives his approval.

When word comes to the town that Malena's husband Nino has died in battle, a town hero, the town holds a public ceremony to honor him.  She wears black.  She grieves.  The boys in their military exercises announce to one another that she is now available.  Men go crazy.

Eventually Malena in her loneliness receives a man.  A companion.  Comfort.  Solace.

When he leaves, another man confronts him in the street.  Both men claim to be her fiance.  The other man has never visited her.  They fight over her.  The other man's wife comes out of the house and finds him fighting.  This is all she needs to confirm that he has indeed been with another woman.  She beats and berates him.  She takes her fueled anger to the other women.  She presses charges.

At the trial the bachelor defends Malena by claiming it was friendship only.  Her defense attorney further states that the man is a bachelor and Malena is a widow, so no crime was committed and no harm was done.  The defense attorney indulges in theatrical antics.  He wins.

He takes Malena home and demands payment.  She cannot afford him.  No problem.  He will accept payment in some other form.  She does not want that.  She resists.  He overpowers her.  Renato watches helplessly.

As the war progresses, Malena's fortunes diminish further, and she turns to means of support that confirm the town's suspicions.  German soldiers are now present.  And they pay.  But they are also the enemy, for Italy has changed sides.  The townswomen have had enough.

Things might turn tragic for Malena.

Yet they might also turn out in another, unexpected way.

Malena is two movies.  A look at the way societies punish the strange, the beautiful, and the unknown.  And the story of a boy's becoming a man.

It does not carry the same weight as Cinema Paradiso, but it adds to Tornatore's growing canon of films appropriating and commenting on film.

Monica Bellucci stars as Melena in a courageous role.  She was a model, and people wondered if as a model she could act.  But this was her twentieth film in a ten-year stretch, so that concern should have been satisfied by now.  You may know her as Persephone from the Matrix movies as well as Mary Magdalen from The Passion of the Christ (2004).  She also played Dr. Lena Kendricks in Antoine Fuqua's Bruce Willis action movie Tears of the Sun (2003); as the Mirror Queen in Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm (2005), starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger; as Veronica in John Turtletaub's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010), starring Nicholas Cage; and many other, especially European films.