by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Stefano Accorsi, Carolina Crescentini, Miriam Leone, Claudio Santamaria, Alessandra Carrillo, Margherita Pantaleo
Intro:
… utterly immersive and highly enjoyable. It’s well acted, and the script is sagacious about marriage, relationships and (philosophically) life in general.
This gem of a drama is based on the novel Siracusa by Delia Ephron — only with the characters changed from Americans in Sicily to Italians in Tangier, Morocco.
Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) and Elisa (Miriam Leone) are a successful couple, he a university professor and she a novelist and internationally acclaimed journalist.
And they’re not just writers: they are the kind of people who can quote philosophers and literary greats in casual conversation without sounding pretentious.
Carlo and Elisa have been together for twenty years, and their passion seems to have dimmed somewhat. They head to Tangier for a holiday with their old friends Anna (Carolina Crescentini) and Paolo (Claudio Santamaria) and their 13-year-old daughter Vittoria (Margherita Pantaleo — a major actress in the making). All of which might — notwithstanding certain tensions and complications between the friends — have been pretty fun and rejuvenating.
Except, that is, for one very big problem. Carlo has been conducting an affair with Blu (Beatrice Savignani), one of his philosophy students, who’s 23. Unbeknownst to him, Blu decides to follow him to Tangier, and everything goes (or threatens to go) pear-shaped.
There are elements in what follows which might just have been ‘operatic’ or reminiscent of a bedroom farce in their unhinged intensity, were they not so realistically and brilliantly set out. Instead, it’s an unalloyed delight.
Words Left Unspoken is utterly immersive and highly enjoyable. It’s well acted, and the script is sagacious about marriage, relationships and (philosophically) life in general. The whole story rings true, it’s almost never predictable and the acting is flawless. The beautiful setting doesn’t hurt either. It’s heartily recommended.
