Unforgivable (Impardonnables – 2011), from director André Téchiné has something for everyone; it’s French but it’s filmed in Venice and about a quarter of the dialogue is in Italian. For those of us who just love a movie made in Italy, this one’s an entertaining 111 minutes.
It’s centered around French crime writer. Francis (André Dussollier) who moves to Venice’s Sant’Erasmo Island to work on his novel. A bad case of writer’s block lands him there for longer than expected and the peace and quiet that he’d been looking for is immediately interrupted.
Francis is an aging ladies’ man who marries his beautifully androgynous real estate agent (Carole Bouquet) and finds himself on the other end of the infidelity story; his writer’s eye very quickly notices that there is a dark side to his wife and she may be hiding something from him. To make matters worse, his daughter (Mélanie Thierry) goes missing on a trip to visit him, abandoning her teenage daughter and leaving him completely unsettled.
Unforgivable is more impression than narrative, the end result for me a stomach-ache and general feeling of sadness – but in a good way. The characters, living life irresponsibly and carelessly, are all in need of forgiveness, having asked for it or not. It’s not an action movie, and the plot is fuzzy as can be, but there is intrigue; it’s a psychological thriller with the kind of emotional complexity that European filmmakers do best.
Watch it instantly on Netflix without subtitles. Why no subtitles Netflix???
Watch it instantly on Vudu with subtitles.
I Love Italian Everything 