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DON'T MOVE (NON TI MUOVERE) Send This Review to a Friend
Penélope Cruz as Italia, a poor, working class woman, gets raped early in “Don’t Move” by an upscale doctor. She lets him come back for more and then falls in love with him. Not a good move—falling in love with your rapist, especially if he’s a married rapist. Not a good move either for anyone in an audience who finds rape as a gateway to love on the disgusting side.
Cruz is being touted as showing how good an actress she can be in this change of pace for her. But this Italian import is so awful that her emoting wildly, grunting and carrying on in general scarcely proves her talent. Sergio Castellitto as Timoteo, the love-smitten doctor, a surgeon, does better when the script isn’t undermining him too.
Castillitto has also directed from a script that he co-wrote with Margaret Mazzantini, on whose novel the film is based. The opening shots are arresting as a view from on high shows rain falling below, and then zeroes in on the scene of an accident and on a motorcycle helmet. The doctor’s daughter is rushed to a hospital in an effort to save her life, and distraught, Timoteo is trying to contact his wife, Elsa, who has taken a trip to England. The fate of the daughter is touch and go, and meanwhile, we get flashbacks into the doctor’s earlier life and his torrid affair.
When he decides after much vacillation to run off with Italia, she has a medical crisis, and he must rush her to a hospital, where he takes matters in hand and operates on her himself. There’s obviously a lot in this story to wrap up.
As Timoteo’s wife Elsa, Claudia Gerini is so beautiful and inviting that one wonders what her husband could see in the scruffy, unimpressive Italia, even allowing for getting so hot he would rape her. But then the varied reasons for arousal are not always easy to explain, and neither is the brainpower that would lead to making such a bummer of a movie. A Northern Arts Entertainment release.
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