I Love Italian Everything

I really wanted to like Saturno Contro,  Saturn in Opposition, and I didn’t actually hate it. You all know how much I love Italian movies; I just didn’t love this one.

And it’s a shame. DIrector Ferzan Ozpetek is talented and promising. The cast, with one of my favorites, Margherita Buy (Caterina Va in Città, Giorni e Nuvole ), Stefano Accori (L’ultimo Bacio), and the handsome Pierfrancesco Favino ( Cosavogliodipiù ) has all the star power any good movie needs, but there are still problems.

1 ) The dialogue is contrived. I don’t know what kind of scintillating dinner parties Ferzan’s used to going to, and I’m not saying that people I know can’t be amusing, but I just don’t think that normal friends talk like they do in a Ferzan Ozpetek movie. At least all the time.

2 ) The story is thin, and yet it’s too much.  What I mean to say is this: there isn’t enough here for a movie. It’s a sad, sentimental tear-jerker that would be OK for a made for TV movie but is not weighty enough for a major motion picture. At the same it’s overly complicated by the big group of quirky friends and all of their problems and affectations and it just didn’t seem…believable.

3 ) And I hate to say it again, but Ferzan. I wish you’d expand your list of topics.. While it’s great that Ozpetek tells stories about homosexuals and I’m sure that it has done a lot of good in terms of helping people to accept homosexuality, I just don’t think that all his stories have to be gay stories. He’s been quoted as saying that people focus too much on the gay themes, but how can we help it if that’s the what the stories are always about?