Non ti muovere

Plot synopsis:
Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto), a surgeon, gets the shocking news that his fifteen-year-old daughter Angela (Elena Perino) has been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. As she is operated upon, Timoteo looks out of a window to see (or imagines seeing) a woman, her back facing him, proceeding to sit down on a chair in the rain outside. He notices her prominent red heels and turns away in disbelief, indicating he was familiar with them. His subsequent reminiscences about an old affair comprise the remainder of the film.
A subsequent scene shows Timoteo sitting in a bar in an unfamiliar location on a hot day. Italia (Penélope Cruz), a woman of Albanian origin working at the bar and wearing red heels, offers to let him make a seemingly important call from her home. The inebriated Timoteo, having entered her flat, rapes Italia and subsequently he pretends fall in love with her. He learns from her, among other things, she was sexually abused in her childhood by a dress salesman (who is later revealed to be her father). He decides to leave his wife Elsa (Claudia Gerini) and conveys this to Italia but,just as he is about to come clean, he discovers that Elsa is pregnant. Meanwhile, Italia also becomes pregnant with his child. Timoteo, now in a real dilemma, cannot gather the courage to confront Elsa in her condition. Italia, unaware of this, interprets Timoteo's hesitation as a lack of commitment on his part and is heartbroken by this perceived betrayal. Later, Timoteo encounters a seemingly unstable Italia dancing frenziedly outside her house. On his chiding her, Italia tells him agitatedly that she has had their child aborted at a nearby gypsy's,adding bitterly it was for the best as she wouldn't have made a good mother anyway. Greatly disturbed by this development,Timoteo leaves and goes home to his pregnant wife.
Some months later, Timoteo, shopping with his wife who is about to deliver, spots Italia in a crowd and rushes after her in the rain. After catching up with her, he profusely apologises to Italia, asking her forgiveness for all the pain he caused. After reacting violently initially, Italia tells him that she knew now why he could not leave his wife and that she understood. He also learns from her that she would be moving to another town shortly.
Next morning, Timoteo offers to drive Italia down to her new town. During the journey, his feelings for Italia grow stronger and he confesses his desire to marry and settle down with her in the new town. While having dinner, Timoteo marries himself off to Italia and refers to her as "my wife" while speaking to a waitress. That night, he is woken by Italia's screams as she is gripped by unbearable pain in her abdomen. She is rushed to the local hospital, where an ultrasound reveals her belly to be full of blood, indicating a botched abortion. A desperate Timoteo then proceeds to operate on Italia. She dies soon after briefly regaining consciousness.
His recollections are interrupted by a nurse who informs him that his daughter's condition has stabilised. He then visits her with his wife. In the final act, a relieved Timoteo takes out Italia's red shoe, which she had lost on the way to the hospital the day she died, and that the funeral company had refused to put in the closed coffin, and which he had carefully preserved, and kisses it as a gesture of thanks.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
gripping, heartfelt, as kudos-deserving as the best-selling novel of the same title upon which it's based, written by Margaret Mazzantini (here she is the co-screenwriter and also appears in a glimpse-like wordless cameo, at the end of the movie), winner of the Strega - one of Italy's main literary prizes - in the year 2002.The director and male lead Sergio Castellitto - who plays the cowardly ambiguous surgeon Timoteo - is as immense as always.
His was clearly a true labor of love.Penélope Cruz is astounding, realistic and yet heartbreaking, enormously moving, totally disappearing into her character, who's a poor, destitute, cheaply dressed and unkempt woman named Italia.
She cleans hotel rooms for a living and lives herself in a slum, but has got the purest and noblest of souls ("She's a toad in a miniskirt who teaches the Prince how to love", in actor-director Castellitto's own words).Comedy actress Claudia Gerini - in her first highly dramatic role as the guy's betrayed wife - is very, very good herself.Last but not least, the Castellitto-Cruz chemistry is amazingly powerful: much more so, say, than the Cruise-Cruz one in Vanilla Sky, enough said ...!I cried my eyes out, even though I had read the novel more than once, therefore perfectly knowing the story!HERE is a movie which I definitely want to watch multiple times.As for myself, well, after two days I'm still re-living all the marvelous, emotionally intense moments which I enjoyed while watching this movie.Really nothing in Penélope Cruz's resume will prepare you to what she does here, not even what I think was her best performance before this movie, i.e. Sister Rosa in Pedro Almodovar's ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER ...
Not to mention that she acts here in Italian language, and she commands it perfectly.Just to get an idea of her greatness in this movie, here are actor-director Sergio Castellitto's words at the press conference for the movie, which took place in Rome on March 9th:"Penélope is heartbreaking, she's as great as [Federico Fellini's wife] Giulietta Masina [in the movie La Strada], what she did for this movie is amazing: a lesson of humbleness, passion and courage.
Note: Penélope Cruz' character Italia is, if at all comparable to Federico Fellinis work the legitimate continuation of Giulietta Masina's character Cabiria from "Le Notti di Cabiria", not Gelsomina from "La Strada".Having said this I will briefly add this comment to mention that "Non ti muovere" is one of the two best films I have seen so far.So another comment in favor of Castellito's amazing piece work.Make up your own mind.
This immersive character study into an unfulfilled doctor's love affair is a tad too lengthy and perhaps the director indulges in his on screen action a little too much, but the dedication that the two ill-fated lovers give to portraying the rawness of their emotions and instincts will, despite once in a while misfiring, leave few viewers unfazed.
Obviously it is the love of acting that propels her(no comparison to her English jobs), as this mildly received Italian film must have been several notches down from her draw, but when you see the psychologically harrowing sex scenes (not always for the sex, but for the right before and right after) you realize why someone would be interested in such intimate work.
While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto) recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia (Penélope Cruz), a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives.When I bought the DVD "Non ti Muovere", I was expecting to see an above average dramatic romance.
"Non ti Muovere" is a very intense low budget movie, a precious gem to be discovered by movie lovers, with a touching and sad love story that recalled me Fellini's "Le Notti di Cabiria": There are two points very similar in these films: the character of the lonely and simple Italia, who works cleaning hotels, and recalled me the prostitute Cabiria; and the very poor isolated location in the slums where both characters (Italia and Cabiria) live.
He brings a great presence to the screen although his character here is darker than the outgoing Italian chef in Martha."Don't Look Now" is a riveting story of a surgeon sitting in the waiting room of a hospital where he works with his 15 yo daughter and only child seriously injured fighting for her life in the operating room.
Whilst waiting he recounts the crucial moments in his life and mainly his sordid and violent (his) relationship with Cruz, a derelict young woman and the interplay and very much parallel life with his wife, a successful journalist played by Claudia Gerini who looks very much like an Italian Diane Lane..
His house overlooks a beautiful beach, Cruz's is in a dusty hellhole in the middle of a construction site.This film makes perfect use of flashbacks something I normally detest particularly ones that move in reverse order like Momento or the French Film "Irreversible"The rape scene between Cruz and Castellitto is much briefer than that in "Irreversible" but just as uncomfortable to watch.I couldn't quite work out the attraction between Cruz's and Castellitto's characters as there was no gentleness in his approach at first (it was rape) but somehow he falls in love with her.But there is a lot to enjoy here and a lot to think about afterwards.
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.
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.
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.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!).
It's a beautiful drama story, with simple characters, where a man, a doctor with a nice social position, married and supposily happy meets the woman of his life in the ugly, poor and incredibly sad Italia ( Penelope crux).
From a certain point, this film is an attempt to be revealed the beauty of the simple moments in life through exposing its ugliness.If you like this style of the European cinema, I am sure, you'll find it worthy to watch that movie!.
Penelope Cruz shows her metal in a convincing performance as a woman used and abused but ultimately capable of deep love in this emotional roller-coaster of a movie that shows Italian cinema is very much alive.In the opening shot, the camera is positioned vertically, in line with the gravity that propels rain down into the street below, to a motorcycle helmet, the umbrellas of the crowd drawn to the accident, and ultimately the body of the 15yr old woman who has sustained head injuries.
Devastated by watching his young child undergo surgery his mind flashes back to the time of her birth, a time when, married to a beautiful but cold woman Elsa (the beautiful and talented Claudia Gerini), he has an affair with a common woman Italia (an extraordinary performance by the gifted Penélope Cruz).
Cruz proves that she is one of the most gifted actresses before the cameras today and it seems a shame that her Italian and Spanish movies acknowledge her gifts while her American movies place her in rather silly roles where her natural beauty seems to be more important.While this film is not without flaws, the power of becoming involved with the characters is sweepingly forceful.
This could and should have been an interesting depiction of a middle-age crisis, of a person who just doesn't fit in the picture that it's his life, but instead it's a seemingly meaningless love story, with an unaesthetic Penelope Cruz, who, unfortunately for her is no great actress..
It's what I call the Nanni Morreti syndrome: a childish self obsessed sexist heterosexual male who is supposedly desired by all other characters, the wife he cheats on, the girl he rapes, the daughter whom he treats like a son, and then still wants the whole world to take pity on him for his suffering existence in the upper class world of the Italian elite.
I only kept watching because Penelope Cruz's performance is so unlike her normal characters, and she does a great job, but she can't save an otherwise flawed movie..
Eventually this poor woman dies --best thing could ever have happened to her, poor thing (and to us, after two long hours!!), because throughout the whole movie she couldn't have been more miserable (Bad mascara, bad hair, cheap clothes, raped when in her teens by her own perspiring father, a real mess!!)-- and he resigns himself to her death after looking a lot outside a hospital window and having plenty of close ups.It also rains a lot in several scenes soaking the leading couple to the bone --wet hair sticking to their faces, etc.
I started out disgusted with the main character Timoteo (Castellitto) and un-accepting of the reality of the relationships between the characters, mistress Italia (Cruz) and wife Elsa (Gerini).
Chance makes that his mistress remains pregnant but makes abortion and his wife also remains pregnant and now finds himself in a very difficult situation for he will have to choose between the two women.It's a good drama with a difficult role for Penelope Cruz but here show us that she is a great class actress and she is talented enough to be able to enter into character.The Director who also plays the main character gives evidence of a extraordinary talent because he manages to combine love with tragedy and done so well that this film is impossible not to move you..
A minor masterpiece, Don't Move is the story of Timoteo, a surgeon (played by Sergio Castellitto, also directing), and his affair with Italia (Penelope Cruz), a troubled, lower-class woman.Told in flashback, we slowly learn about how the affair began, and how it grew  as Timoteo's only daughter lies on an operating table, after falling off her bike.
Cruz and Castellitto are stunning as troubled people from different backgrounds who seem to fall in love  Cruz in particular, disregarding her usual glamorous on-screen persona, is almost unrecognisable.I think Italia was slightly under-written, and a little obvious in her troubled past - but Timoteo is an intricate character, a brilliant description of a torn man - torn by sex, love, and a desire for simple happiness.A moving, stunning study of love, wonderfully written and acted..
The story I found derivative with more than overtones of Blier's Trop Belle Pour Toi - that's the one where Gege Depardieu turns aside from a gorgeous wife like Carole Bouquet (in real life he has more sense and they've long been an item)in favor of Josie Balasko - that finds Castellitto's surgeon falling for the hard-to-see charms of Cruz despite having a drop-dead gorgeous wife in the shape of Claudia Gerini.
Finally, the relationship between Timoteo and Italia is a tear coming down from a bright eye, because it starts with suffering and pain, that eventually becomes water that feeds the earth, because it turns out to be pure and true love, that kind of love that makes you feel alive, sad or happy, lost or at home.
Rebecca Miller directs Daniel Day-Lewis in 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose.' Sergio Castellitto debuts as director, starring with Penelope Cruz, in a movie made from his wife Margaret Mazzantini's novel, 'Non ti muovere' ('Don't Move').
In her part as his secret mistress, Penelope Cruz gets a chance to have the great soulful tragic role she was born for, though she has to endure all sorts of cruel misuse along the way.Too bad 'Don't Move' is a painfully confused melodrama with schlocky eroticism and woman's-picture weepiness (of a kind that's nonetheless demeaning to women)  a movie that feels at times like Zalmon King's sleazy (though undeniably erotic) Red Shoe Diaries.
The film's implication is that Italy's foreign immigrants are in for even more brutal treatment.'Don't Move' tells the story of Timofeo's torrid, abusive-but-addictive love affair with Italia in flashbacks while Angela, his teenage daughter, is in the operating room hovering near death from skull injuries after a motor scooter accident where her helmet wasn't fastened properly.
For adults only, but worth the watch when and IF it ever comes to the USA (wake-up acquisitions people!!!) Italian actor Sergio Castellito ("Mostly Martha") proves to be a more than capable director with only his second film "Don't Move." Although the film opens in the present with a motorbike accident in the rain, it quickly heads 15 years back in time in order to develop the main storyline of an adulterous young doctor who makes an odd acquaintance in the countryside.
Castellito also stars in the film as 'Dr.'Timo', a surgeon with no moral compass who, while waiting for his car to be fixed, gets drunk and 'date' rapes a strange woman who up to this point has only acted as a good Samaritan on the doctor's behalf.
on the other hand, when she is not presented as a docile madonna who likes being raped, she does scream a lot, which while not interesting in terms of character development, i suppose was calculated to address the surgeon's (and audience's) sense of guilt, which ultimately is the main theme of the film, even though it is dramatized in the most infantile manner imaginble.much of the film's running time is spent watching some astonishingly unpleasant sex scenes, visually favoring the physically unattractive male lead (who also happens to be the director).
As he is helplessly waiting for the surgery to save his daughter's life, Timoteo begins his confession: a painful account of his early years, of his suffocating relationship with his wife, Elsa (Claudia Gerini), of his acquaintance with a destitute Albanian émigré, Italia (Penelope Cruz), and of their tragic love-affair which started with her rape by Timoteo and ended with her death.
"Don't Move (Non ti muovere)" is a European intellectual take on "Unfaithful" with issues of abuse, class, religion and regionalism replacing the Hollywood thriller aspect of the results of infidelity within an upper middle class marriage.The characters start out from the get go freighted with way too much symbolism before they finally just become moving and well-acted participants in a sad affair.Penelope Cruz, as the ragtag object of the obsession of the character portrayed by magnetic star/co-writer and director Sergio Castellitto, is actually named "Italia," is an Albanian immigrant, and lives in a condemned house amidst the ruins of a thwarted and overly ambitious luxury housing project, which somehow towards the end of the movie seems to be located in the same town as the successful surgeon who lives in a gorgeous seaside villa with his beautiful, loving, highly educated and not oblivious wife.The two meet a la Catherine Breillat's sexually brutal films, but the trajectory of their lives becomes more conventional and tragic, as the power shifts between them.
Story here is about a surgeon named Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto) who finds his daughter Angela (Elena Perino) fighting for her life with a head injury after a motorcycle accident and while he waits for her diagnosis he remembers the affair he had with another woman.*****SPOILER ALERT***** Timoteo was stranded out in the country one day with his car broke down when he meets a poor woman named Italia (Cruz) who allows him to come over to her hovel to use the phone but he's a little drunk and ends up raping her.
Italia is Albanian and has a dark past and she makes ends meet by working as a hotel maid and while their relationship starts out roughly it ends with them being deeply in love with each other.This is directed by actor Sergio Castellitto (Timoteo in the film) and the script comes from the novel by Margaret Mazzantini who happens to be Castellitto's wife.
Then we have the acting, both Penelope Cruz and Sergio Castellitto himself act fine, and give life and emotion to a couple of characters who otherwise would have fallen in ridicule.Yet, this is not enough for a good film.
Successful surgeon Timoteo (Sergio Castellitti) is waiting anxiously as colleagues operate to save the life of his teenage daughter but finds himself possessed by the past as he relives an abusive yet passionate affair from the time of her birth.When his car breaks down, the younger Timoteo is helped by poor migrant worker Italia (Penélope Cruz) and repays her by drunkenly raping her.
Don't Move is an Italian film that stars Penélope Cruz, Claudia Gerini, Elena Perino and Sergio Castellitto.It was the second feature from actor/director Sergio Castellito and he co-wrote the script with his wife, actress/author Margaret Mazzantini from her best-selling novel.
Elsa is reluctant to have children, despite Timoteo's wishes, so when he learns that Italia is pregnant, he has a critical decision to make about how he wants to live his life.The gritty performances from Cruz and Castellitto outweigh the film's flaws.It was a full-bodied love story with a wrenching impact that makes most of today's screen romances seem undernourished by comparison.Overall,it still a good view for people who love good romantic movies..
Italia is a more reserved woman who knows she is out of her league in her affair with Timoteo.Sergio Castellitto shows he has interesting things to say to an audience.
The story centers around Italia(Penelope Cruz) a peasant with a dark secret and the perverted doctor Timoteo(Sergio Castellitto, who also directs) whom she crosses paths with.