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Malena (2000)

tomatometer

55

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.

47

Average Rating: 5/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 14 | 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.

audience

85

liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 27,726

My Rating

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,

Jul 10, 2001

Miramax

All Critics (85) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (35) | DVD (12)

[Tornatore] eludes sentimentality with a romantic vision wide enough to embrace the range of human experience.

February 7, 2001 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
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Bereft of the more richly textured sentiments of Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso.

February 7, 2001 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment
TIME Magazine
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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.

February 7, 2001 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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Like so many movies these days, Maléna is a jumble of ideas from earlier films.

February 2, 2001 Full Review Source: Sacramento Bee | Comment
Sacramento Bee
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Its heart is in the right place.

February 2, 2001 Comment
Orlando Sentinel
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Transparently misogynist at its core.

February 2, 2001 Comment
Mr. Showbiz
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Malèna barely speaks a word in the film, but Belucci makes a role that is written as a symbol into a full-blooded person.

February 15, 2010 Full Review Source: TheMovieReport.com | Comment
TheMovieReport.com

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

February 2, 2009 Full Review Source: Las Vegas CityLife | Comment

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.

December 25, 2006 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

A fully-fleshed out portrait, swirled in sweetness and nostalgia.

May 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | Comment
Combustible Celluloid

La historia trata en realidad también de Italia y la pérdida de inocencia, de los costumbrismos y elementos regionales...

July 25, 2004 Full Review Source: Cinenganos | Comment
Cinenganos

With Fellini and Leoni gone, who now stands as Italy's greatest living filmmaker? ... The correct answer has to be Giuseppe Tornatore.

December 8, 2002 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat

...appeals to the eye without much attention to the mind. As I said, I wanted to like it much more.

April 16, 2002 Comment
Movie Metropolis
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Malena

I must give another thumbs up for Guiseppe Tornatore for making another great and memorable movie titled Malena... Especially he make the right cast for putting Monica Bellucci as the beautiful Malena and Guiseppe Sulfaro as Renato... An extra credit for Sulfaro for Renato that great... He looks like a boy who obsessed

February 18, 2007
ajaymuthecooldevils
Sanjaya 丘耀文

Super Reviewer

Malena is another heartfelt tale of growing up from director Tornatore. It shows a young boys first love/lust as he falls for a woman in his home town. All the men love her and all the women hate her. What starts as vicious rumours and wolf whistles soon turns more tragic. We always see Malena from the perspective of

May 2, 2009
kiriyamakazou

Super Reviewer

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