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04/23/09
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The Unknown Woman (2006)
64
%
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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
Postures 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
The Unknown Woman falters when it falls into exploitation and fatal contrivance.
10/23/08
From its silly exploitation treatment of prostitution and sexual bondage you'd never imagine that Giuseppe Tornatore, the same director who created the magnificent "Cinema Paradiso," made "The Unknown Woman."
05/10/08
Tornatore 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 film has major problems blending the strong social theme of exploitation and white slavery with Tornatore's noirish screenplay, full of holes and improbabilities.
10/18/08
Meet the filmmaker that [Tornatore] is today -- sadomasochistic fantasist, exploiter of women and cheesy Hitchcock imitator.
06/26/08
A riveting lead performance by Rappoport [...] overshadowed by the more frequent potboiler preposterousness.
05/30/08
This is a case where style has not only trumped substance, but negated it as well.
05/09/08
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 CriticThe Unknown Woman begins the same way director Giuseppe Tornatore's last film, Malena, operated throughout: by ogling a fine female form.
03/31/08
An unstable concoction of political melodrama, film noir, and weepie.
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
Plays like a cross between Hitchcock and tabloid feminism, a mix that shouldn't work and doesn't.
09/19/08
It gets more and more ridiculous and unbelievable as it goes along, and the final scene is shamelessly manipulative.
05/30/08
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
An exceptionally well-made example of the kind of delirious, semi-Gothic, overcooked melodrama filmmakers from the Boot have long specialized in.
05/30/08
Top Critica movie that's almost impossible to get out of your head.
05/06/09
Classy but hardly enjoyable Giallo thriller.
12/12/07
Un intenso y atrapante thriller con algo de melodrama que bien podría haber dirigido Brian de Palma.
11/26/08
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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