This is a case where style has not only trumped substance, but negated it as well.
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05/09/08
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The Unknown Woman (2006)
64
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:25
Rotten:14
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: If it's occasionally manipulative, this Italian melodrama mixes thriller conventions with a poignant love story and keeps the tension rolling from start to finish.
Theatrical Release:2008-03
Synopsis: Russian actress Xenia Rappoport gives a rich, complex lead performance in Giuseppe Tornatore's Italian thriller, THE UNKNOWN WOMAN (LA SCONOSCIUTA). Rappoport stars as Irena, a deeply troubled... [More]
Starring: Ksenia Rappoport, Clara Dossena, Michele Placido, Claudia Gerini
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
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Reviews for The Unknown Woman
Top CriticA restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor.
05/29/08
The Unknown Woman is a thriller and a love story, and those elements are mixed together in unexpected ways. It's a stunning film.
05/09/08
[An] exquisite mystery thriller.
10/18/08
Un intenso y atrapante thriller con algo de melodrama que bien podría haber dirigido Brian de Palma.
11/26/08
Plays like a cross between Hitchcock and tabloid feminism, a mix that shouldn't work and doesn't.
09/19/08
Top CriticWriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore ("Cinema Paradiso," "Malèna") reveals a hitherto unknown side of his own with this dark jigsaw puzzle of a mystery.
09/11/08
A spellbinder with a lot of Hitchcock touches and an Ennio Morricone score to match.
08/15/08
Top CriticTornatore is unable to sustain tension once the heroine’s agenda is revealed halfway through, and what follows veers between ploddingly dull and unintentionally risible.
05/29/08
The melodrama form allows Tornatore to examine such current issues as human trafficking and black-market babies within a yarn that, for all its sentiment, is never less than gripping.
05/28/08
Top CriticJust under two hours, sumptuously photographed in noirish shades and slathered in spine-tingling music by Ennio Morricone, it twists every which way to sustain suspense until the final frame.
05/30/08
Top CriticThe Unknown Woman falters when it falls into exploitation and fatal contrivance.
10/23/08
Top CriticIt’s the toast of the continent and once you’ve watched it, the reason why it is will be anything but a mystery.
10/18/08
The whole movie hangs on the gradual unraveling of the central mystery and is made with the expectation that the audience is fascinated and hanging on every tidbit. But Tornatore overplays his hand.
07/25/08
Top CriticA riveting lead performance by Rappoport [...] overshadowed by the more frequent potboiler preposterousness.
05/30/08
Tornatore, best known for Cinema Paradiso, has meticulously crafted a story that's at times so raw it hurts to watch. Its action blends piercingly lit flashbacks and dream sequences with a gray, prosaic present in an unnamed Italian city.
10/24/08
It's an uneasy mix, and not an entirely successful one. But the film is flat-out gorgeous and contains moments of sheer lunacy.
05/30/08
Wanting it both ways, Tornatore presents the tragedy of sex slavery, while lavishly eroticizing it. And without a clue about female desires or dreams, whether sex slaves, servants or hysterical psychos, beyond their sexual apparatus. Unknown Woman, indeed
05/20/08
It gets more and more ridiculous and unbelievable as it goes along, and the final scene is shamelessly manipulative.
05/30/08
Top CriticPostures as empathetic while getting its leading lady out of her skivvies -- there's nothing bold about taking a stance against human trafficking
06/27/08
Latest News for The Unknown Woman
September 19, 2008:
OtherCool.com: Wanting it both ways, Tornatore presents the tragedy of sex slavery, while lavishly eroticizing it. And without a clue about female desires or dreams, whether sex slaves, servants or hysterical psychos, beyond their sexual apparatus. 
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May 29, 2008:
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May 18, 2008:
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