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Cuore Sacro combines glossy film effects with a story that leaves much to be desired. With a script that the screen-writers for "Touched by an Angel" might have passed up as being too impuissant, Ozpetek still keeps us interested at times. In fact, I wanted to focus on the positives but I found the last act so bafflingly bizarre and awful that I think the couple who jumped to their deaths in the very beginning might have been the fortunate ones.
This movie is at heart (pun intended) a story built on a big twist-style ending. This kind of tenuous foundation can result in a tremendous success like Tornatore's Una Pura Formalità or god-awful garbage like the films of M. Night Shyamalan. Cuore Sacro falls somewhat closer to the latter. I found the cinematography in general to be above average. The tracking shots of Irene dutifully doing her quotidian laps in the pool were very impressive as was the atmosphere conjured by the interior of her mother's house. For me, the grotesque parody of Michelangelo's Pieta when Giancarlo comes in from the rain and Irene poses with him was a bit of a stretch. One big issue that I took exception to in this film was Ozpetek's method of simply turning the camera directly into the face of his protagonist and recording the emotions taking place. This worked to fantastic effect in Facing Windows, but when employed here it seems that Bubolova is no Mezzogiorno. In fact besides the ridiculous story, the main problem with this film is the milquetoast performance of it's main character. It made the final breakdown scene even more unconscionably bad.
In this movie Ozpetek continues his crusade against our corporate-driven societies by urging us to be more spiritual (not necessarily religious) and more altruistic. And while I'm certainly one who is very sympathetic to this view, I felt as if the audience was being hit over the head with a blunt object. Could the characters have been anymore two-dimensional? I tended to find this movie very enervating and soulless. Was the "evil" aunt Eleonora anything more than a caricature? It goes for the people on the side of "right" too, like the "good" aunt Maria Clara and the elderly doorman Aurelio. And just in case we might have missed Ozpetek's point, he decided to clothe his opposing forces in their own liveries.
This brings me to an interesting point about the director's use of color. He clothes the opening couple who briefly take flight in all black, as well as Irene (when we first meet her and after her life-conversion), the evil aunt Eleonora, and of course the good but confused Padre Carras. Black is a color that suggests a definite course, the wearer's mind is set and emotionless. It is the color of choice for that indispensable item of modern day armor, the business suit. It is also the color of mourning, such as the funerary finery sported by the suicidal duo. Finally, black is the color of piety, such as the simple robes of priests and nuns that Irene emulates in the second half of the film.
The other main color, and a very appropriate choice for a movie about the sacred heart, is red. It is a color that has an extreme inherent emotional component. The character who wears red is bold, emotional, receptive to new ideas, and indulgent. Red is a risky color in modern times; it challenges our perceptions of the wearer and at the same time makes the wearer vulnerable. Yet red carries an enormous weight of history and mysticism, as the earliest members of Cro-Magnon man buried their dead in red ochre and indeed the first man named in the Torah, Adam, is named after the Hebrew word for red. Red also has an anachronistic flavor, looking back on the past where red (and by association a less self-driven attitude towards life) was more accepted. So when we encounter the red-filled room (the mysterious frieze covered walls complete with a red accented menorah and a red painting of a Whirling Dervish!) of Irene's mother, "good" characters Maria Clara and Aurelio wearing resplendent outfits of red, and finally the painting of Irene's mother in a formal red gown we can see where Ozpetek's sympathies lie.
A word or two about the soundtrack, I found the original musical themes to be excellently suited to the story. The quasi-baroque theme that signified Irene was great for it's monotony and feeling of restive malaise (the absolute best use of a constantly repeated baroque theme such a this would have to be in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, with it's masterful repetitions of an 8-bar sarabande attributed to Handel). One absolutely inspired choice was a couple of seconds of an opera aria we hear as the power is flickering while Irene is chasing Benny through the house. It is of the famous aria "Ebben? ... Ne andrò lontano" from Catalani's opera "La Wally". The aria is sung by the lead soprano who is leaving home forever. As Irene's mother was a dramatic soprano, we can guess that this is a recording of her singing and that she is saying a poignant farewell to her daughter, as in the movie Irene is soon destined to never again see Benny alive. I just have one minor question of the soundtrack, why include the famous tango Yo Soy Maria? I love the song and personally could hear it all the time, but it didn't really fit here.


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