''Malèna'' is a 2000
historical
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...
romantic drama film
Romance films involve romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theatres or on television that focus on passion (emotion), passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters. Typically their ...
written and directed by
Giuseppe Tornatore
Giuseppe Tornatore (born 27 May 1956) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is considered one of the directors who brought critical acclaim back to Italian cinema.Katz, Ephraim, "Italy," ''The Film Encyclopedia'' (New York: HarperRes ...
from a story by
Luciano Vincenzoni. It stars
Monica Bellucci
Monica Anna Maria Bellucci (; born 30 September 1964) is an Italian actress and model who began her career as a fashion model before working in Italian, American, and French films. She has an eclectic filmography in a range of genres and langua ...
and Giuseppe Sulfaro. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2001
Cabourg Film Festival
The Cabourg Film Festival takes place on the seaside of Normandy every year in June. With romance as its theme, the festival presents a selection of films dedicated to passion, love, and fantasies.
The festival was founded by Gonzague Saint Br ...
.
At the
73rd Academy Awards
The 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best of 2000 in film and took place on March 25, 2001, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Pacif ...
, the film was nominated for
Best Cinematography and
Best Original Score.
Plot
On 10 June 1940, in the small
Sicilian town of Castelcutò, a teenage boy named Renato experiences three major events:
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
enters
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
; he receives a new bike; and he first sees the beautiful and sensual Malèna, who is the most desired young woman in town. Her husband is in the armed forces fighting the British in Africa, and she lives alone. Because of her beauty and solitary status, she is an object of lust for all the town's men and of hatred for its women. She keeps an eye on her infirm old father who lives alone, until he gets an anonymous note slandering her, which causes him to reject her.
Renato becomes obsessed with Malena, spying on her in her house and stalking her when she leaves it. To fuel his erotic fantasies, he
steals some of her underwear from her clothes line. When his parents find it in his bedroom, they become upset and try to break his fixation.
Malèna gets the news that her husband has been killed, adding grief to her isolation. Rumours grow around her, which she unwisely fuels by allowing an unmarried air force officer to visit her after dark. When she is denounced and put on trial, the officer sends testimony that he was nothing more than an occasional friend. The betrayal hurts, but Malèna says nothing to condemn him. After her acquittal, her lawyer pays her a visit and rapes her.
Renato decides to be Malèna's protector, asking God and his saints to watch over her and performing little acts of vengeance against her detractors. He does not realise that his views of her are little better than those of the townspeople, and he has no idea how Malèna herself feels.
Meanwhile, the war reaches Sicily and the town is bombed by the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...
, killing her father. Now penniless and universally scorned, with nobody willing to give her work, she sinks into prostitution. The townsfolk are happy to see her as a whore rather than a dangerous widow. When
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
forces occupy the town and Renato encounters his idol with two German soldiers, he faints. His mother believes it is
demonic possession
Spirit Possession is an altered state of consciousness and associated behaviors which are purportedly caused by the control of a human body and its functions by Supernatural#Spirit, spirits, ghosts, demons, angels, or Deity, gods. The concept ...
, taking him to a priest for
exorcism
Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be do ...
, but his father takes him to the town brothel. There he fantasises that the prostitute he has sex with is Malèna.
The Germans leave, and American troops enter the town, welcomed by ecstatic cheers. The women storm the hotel and drag out Malèna, ripping off her clothes, beating her and cutting off her hair. To escape further persecution, she leaves the hostile town. A few days later, her husband Nino, who has survived as a prisoner of war but lost an arm, comes back looking for her. His house has been taken over by displaced people and nobody wants to tell him how to find his wife. Renato leaves him an anonymous note saying that she still loves him but has suffered misfortunes and gone to the city of
Messina
Messina ( , ; ; ; ) is a harbour city and the capital city, capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of 216,918 inhabitants ...
.
A year later, Nino and Malèna return and are seen strolling through the town. Women notice she now looks more matronly and plain. Even if she is still beautiful, since she is now married and living with her husband, they realize that she is no longer a threat. So people begin speaking of her with more respect. When she goes to the market, the women who beat her say good morning and call her madam. Walking home, some fruit falls from her bag and Renato rushes to pick it up. He wishes her good luck and she gives him an enigmatic half-smile, the only time either has ever spoken to or looked openly at the other.
The aged Renato reflects that he has known and loved many women and has forgotten all of them, but he has never forgotten about Malèna.
Cast
Music
The soundtrack was nominated for an
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
for
Best Original Score and a
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
The Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score is a Golden Globe Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), an organization of journalists who cover the United States film industry, but are affiliated with publications out ...
.
Reception
Critical response
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 54% based on reviews from 78 critics, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "''Malena'' ends up objectifying the character of the movie's title. Also, the young boy's emotional investment with Malena is never convincing, as she doesn't feel like a three-dimensional person."
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, which uses a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
David Rooney of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' wrote, "Considerably scaled down in scope and size from his English-language existential epic, ''
The Legend of 1900
''The Legend of 1900'' (, "The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean") is a 1998 Italian English-language drama film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, and starring Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Mélanie Thierry. It was Tornatore's first Englis ...
'', Giuseppe Tornatore's ''Malena'' is a beautifully crafted but slight
period drama
A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents history, historical events and characters with varying degrees of fiction s ...
that chronicles a 13-year-old boy's obsession with a small-town siren in World War II
Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
. Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance to make it a strong contender for
arthouse
An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...
crossover. But its erotic elements and nostalgic evocation of the same vanished Italy that made international hits of ''
Cinema Paradiso
''Cinema Paradiso'' (, , ) is a 1988 Coming-of-age film, coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore.
Set in a small Sicilian town, the film centres on the friendship between a young boy and an aging projectionist ...
'' and ''
Il Postino
''Il Postino: The Postman'' (, ; the title used for the original US release) is a 1994 comedy-drama film co-written by and starring Massimo Troisi and directed by English filmmaker Michael Radford. Based on the 1985 novel '' Ardiente pacienci ...
'' could supply commercial leverage."
Film critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
compared the film to
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and ...
's work, writing, "Fellini's films often involve adolescents inflamed by women who embody their carnal desires (e.g. ''
Amarcord
''Amarcord'' () is a 1973 comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the village of Borgo San Giuliano (situated near the ancien ...
'' and ''
8½
''8½'' ( ) is a 1963 Italian avant-garde arthouse comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Federico Fellini. The metafictional narrative centers on famous Italian film director Guido Anselmi ( Marcello Mastroianni) who suffers from writer ...
''). But Fellini sees the humor that underlies sexual obsession, except (usually but not always) in the eyes of the participants. ''Malena'' is a simpler story, in which a young man grows up transfixed by a woman and essentially marries himself to the idea of her. It doesn't help that the movie's action grows steadily gloomier, leading to a public humiliation that seems wildly out of scale with what has gone before and to an ending that is intended to move us much more deeply, alas, than it can."
Accolades
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Malena
2000 films
2000 romantic drama films
2000s American films
2000s coming-of-age drama films
2000s erotic drama films
2000s Italian films
2000s Italian-language films
American coming-of-age drama films
American erotic drama films
American erotic romance films
American romantic drama films
American World War II films
Crimes against sex workers in fiction
Films about prostitution in Italy
Films about puberty
Films directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Films produced by Harvey Weinstein
Films scored by Ennio Morricone
Films set in 1940
Films set in 1941
Films set in Sicily
Films shot in Italy
Films shot in Morocco
Films with screenplays by Luciano Vincenzoni
Italian coming-of-age drama films
Italian erotic drama films
Italian romantic drama films
Italian World War II films
Italian-language American films
Italian-language romantic drama films
Medusa Film films
Miramax films