Malena (2000)
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Reviews Counted: 76
Fresh: 42 | Rotten: 34
Malena ends up objectifying the character of the movie's title. Also, the young boy's emotional investment with Malena is never convincing, as she doesn't feel like a three-dimensional person.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 31
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 16
Malena ends up objectifying the character of the movie's title. Also, the young boy's emotional investment with Malena is never convincing, as she doesn't feel like a three-dimensional person.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 28,568
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Movie Info
A young man's infatuation for a beautiful older woman blooms amidst the outbreak of World War II in this bittersweet comedy-drama from Italy. Renato (Giuseppe Sulfaro) is a 13-year-old boy growing up in a small Sicilian community. Mussolini has risen to power and has declared war upon England and France, but Renato has other things on his mind -- mostly girls. While hanging out with his friends by the seashore, Renato spies Malèna (Monica Bellucci), the daughter of one of his schoolteachers,
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Cast
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Monica Bellucci
Malena Scordia -
Giuseppe Sulfaro
Renato Amoroso -
Luciano Federico
Renato's father -
Matilde Piana
Renato's mother -
Pietro Notarianni
Professor Bonsignore -
Gaetano Aronica
Nino Scordia -
Gilberto Idonea
Centorbi -
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All Critics (85) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (35) | DVD (12)
[Tornatore] eludes sentimentality with a romantic vision wide enough to embrace the range of human experience.
Top CriticBereft of the more richly textured sentiments of Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso.
Despite Bellucci's strong presence in a role with little dialogue, the central character never really comes alive in any way interesting enough to give her ordeal much genuine pathos.
Like so many movies these days, Maléna is a jumble of ideas from earlier films.
Its heart is in the right place.
Transparently misogynist at its core.
Malèna barely speaks a word in the film, but Belucci makes a role that is written as a symbol into a full-blooded person.
For those of us who love Cinema Paradiso, the news that its Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore and his musical soulmate Ennio Morricone were getting back together to do another coming-of-age film, Malena, gave us tantalizing hope. Malena fa
Tornatore's Malena is to adolescence what his Cinema Paradiso was to childhood, a lyrical if sentimental fable about the perils of gowing up and the power of the imagination.
A fully-fleshed out portrait, swirled in sweetness and nostalgia.
La historia trata en realidad también de Italia y la pérdida de inocencia, de los costumbrismos y elementos regionales...
With Fellini and Leoni gone, who now stands as Italy's greatest living filmmaker? ... The correct answer has to be Giuseppe Tornatore.
...appeals to the eye without much attention to the mind. As I said, I wanted to like it much more.
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