And of course it has Ariadna Gil, perhaps the best actress in Spain today. `Malena' wins by having better characterization and perhaps better directing, though this may just be a penchant of mine as I thoroughly dislike Óscar Ladoire in `Lulú' or any other film. However the story just seems to be a revamping of `Lulú' as the basic concepts of a highly sexually-awakened woman is the basic entwining thread. Ariadna Gil as Malena and Marta Belaustégui as her twin sister Reina are impeccable, though Gil was superb two years later in `Lágrimas Negras' (q.v.). Such that `Malena' might have been a considerably better film if it had started off from superior material. Her language is often crude, reaching extreme vulgarity, which in itself is not precisely appropriate for writing anything of a decent literary level. And with no doubt, in both cases, Grandes seems equally bent on portraying rather cheaply her own would-have-been appetites. Thus we have both Lulú and Malena coming out of their innocent adolescency into being young women bent on satisfying their sexual desires at any cost, the price being their own self-destruction. More or less bred on romantic rosy love-stories by Corín Tellado, Grandes simply puts in the spicy bits and adds her own sexual fantasies and frustrations for good measure.
Grandes is one of those novelists coming up out of the post-Franco years, and though what she writes is clearly free of taboos, especially those of a sexual nature, her style and quality of writing is poor, to say the least. Besides `Malena' we already have her novel `Las Edades de Lulú' (1990, Bigas Luna) turned into a film - one might say with more pain than glory. Who isn't? That probably is worth some extra points somehow.It is arduously difficult to make a decent film starting from a novel by Almudena Grandes. He's obsessed with a naked Monica Bellucci. There has to more satisfying conversations. He needs to have connections other than an imaginary one with Malèna. In many ways, he has to be more compelling as a character played by a more charismatic actor. This is really a coming of age story about Renato. However, she's really more of an object and what a beautiful object she is. If this is a story about Malèna, it could be something great. Rumors of affairs with married men lead to a court trial. In the town, the men are obsessed and the women are jealous.
He starts spying on her and having erotic dreams about her. They are obsessed with Nino's new wife Malèna Scordia (Monica Bellucci). He gets a new bike and joins a group of local boy.
Mussolini has just declared war on and Britain. Reviewed by SnoopyStyle 6 / 10 beautiful Monica Now THAT'S something I don't remember reading in Dr. To cure his chronic masturbation and wearing the lady's stolen underwear on his head while he slept, his father took him to a prostitute. Oh, and if you want good parenting advice, just look to the boy's father. This and the peoples' reaction to this after the war was really fascinating but unfortunately so much time was spent on this horny kid that the significance of the rest of the film was lost. Then, when she was apparently widowed and broke with no one to help her, she slept with the Nazi occupiers to survive. The film was at its best when it showed human nature, as the townspeople gossiped about and mistreated a decent lady just because she was so beautiful.
Now they didn't show masturbation explicitly, but the little goomer was clearly playing with himself again and again with great gusto! In hindsight, I would have dropped all the sexual hangups the kid had because it tended to deflect the focus in the film. The townspeople turned out to be quite vile and the leading character seemed to have some serious sexual hangups (such as voyeurism and fetishism)-plus he spent so much time masturbating. While WWII isn't exactly a "charming" period, the likability of ANYONE in the film was a problem. The problem is that while the film began well, it seems to have lost its focus and charm. In some ways it reminds me of a combination of AMARCORD and THE SUMMER OF '42-as at least in the beginning, the film focused on ordinary small town folk during the war (like in AMARCORD) and a bunch of very horny boys (like SUMMER OF '42). This is an Italian coming of age film about a young man who was entering his teen years when WWII began. Reviewed by MartinHafer 4 / 10 A real mixed bag.a lot of good and a lot of bad