"Windows" gives lovely, melancholy glimpses of life stories, memories
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Winner of the audience-voted Golden Space Needle award for best film at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, Ferzan Ozpetek's "Facing Windows" is a movie to treasure. An intricate drama about a young but tired marriage, a handsome stranger glimpsed in a neighboring window and an old man haunted by past love, the film creates its own richly populated universe, leaving us happier for having visited it.
Set in an apartment house in contemporary Italy, the film has at its center a young woman named Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a busy wife and mother who's surprised when her husband, Filippo (Filippo Nigro), brings home an elderly man (Massimo Girotti) he's found wandering in the neighborhood. He's another burden for Giovanna, who occasionally interrupts her filled-up life to gaze out the window at the handsome neighbor (Raoul Bova, of "Under the Tuscan Sun") across the way, and to wonder what goes on in his life. (Delicious hints of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" pervade this film, like faint perfume.)
"Facing Windows" becomes a melancholy dance with a trio of ever-changing partners stepping in and out of each other's lives, as Giovanna becomes increasingly intrigued by the old man and his memories, which date back to the Second World War and a secret he has kept. And as she helps him recover his identity, she becomes braver in exploring the world of her neighbor — even crossing over into his apartment, looking back into the dark windows of her own.
It's all beautifully acted, with Girotti (a veteran Italian actor who died shortly after completing this film, adding another layer of poignancy) heartbreaking as a man whose memories are growing ever more distant, however desperately he reaches for them. Mezzogiorno, a dark-eyed beauty, has a wonderful naturalness to her performance. (When Lorenzo, her neighbor, unexpectedly calls her on the phone, she absently reaches up to pull her hair out of its ponytail and fluff it up — even though he can't see her.) And her final smile — a long, slow close-up — is like a gift to an audience already dazzled.
Ozpetek, best known for his 1997 debut "Steam: The Turkish Bath," treats all of his characters with generosity, even those we barely see.
It's what gives the film such a sense of richness — the idea that everyone here has a life and a story, if only we know where to look for it. (Two bickering sisters who work at the dry cleaners — glimpsed for mere seconds — are so vivid they almost deserve a movie of their own.)
Ultimately, "Facing Windows" is both mystery and memory-play, exploring the often-lovely shadows that remain after people, or relationships, are gone. "Does everyone who leaves you, leave part of themselves with you? Is this the secret of having memories?" wonders Giovanna at the end. Ozpetek's film movingly answers this question: It accompanies you as you leave the theater and you step back into your own life, becoming a lovely memory of its own.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
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