All The Days Ordained

Io, Don Giovanni is a breathtakingly beautiful Italian film directed by Carlos Saura about Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist for ‘The Marriage of Figaro’, and ‘Don Giovanni’. The costuming is rich and decadent, reflective of both Lorenzo da Ponte and opera’s indulgent lifestyle; and famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro works his magic once more.

There are more screenshots here: http://allthedaysordained.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/io-don-giovanni.html

One of the greatest stories of all time.

One of my favourite scenes from the film Io non ho paura. Tomatoes are delicious.

Under the Tuscan Sun

I’ve Got No Strings from Disney’s Pinocchio in Italian

I have just finished watching an Italian film written and directed by Emanuele Crialese, called Respiro, starring Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato, and Francesco Casisa. It is set on an island called Lampedusa, near western Sicilia. It is very different from any other Italian film I have seen so far; extremely gritty and pared-back with a haunting soundtrack, creating a tension. Respiro is realist while also containing an air of the mythical.

Grazia (Valeria Golino), is the wife of a fisherman named Pietro (Vincenzo Amato), and mother of a teenage girl and two sons. She works along with the other women tinning fish, but becomes fed up with such a mundane life, and behaves irrationally and erratically. At times sweet and docile, other times impulsive and hysterical. As the problems escalate, her family soon comes to the decision that she must get clinical help from a doctor in Milan, but she refuses to go. It is Grazia’s son Pasquale (Francesco Casisa) who will do anything to protect his mother.

Elle s’appelait Sarah, is a French film known in English as Sarah’s Key. Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and starring Kristin Scott-Thomas, it is based upon a novel of the same name by Tatiana de Rosnay.

This film is one of the most heart-wrenching films I have ever seen. The acting is amazing and the cinematography stunning. Before watching this, I had had no idea at all about the Vel d’Hiv Roundup, had never even heard of the horror that had gone on in Paris during World War II. It’s still so hard to believe that all this happened not that long ago at all. 

‘… Kristin Scott-Thomas stars as Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband and teenage daughter. When Julia is commissioned to write an article about the notorious 1942 Vel d’Hiv Roundup, she stumbles upon a secret which will change her life, and that of her family, forever.

Julia’s research draws a connection between the family apartment that she and her husband are renovating, and its former residents, the Jewish Starzynski family. Resolving to discover what became of them, she finds herself focusing on the fate of their daughter, Sarah, in an investigation that takes her across France and even back to America. The more Julia unearths, the more she discovers about Bertrand’s famiy, about France and, finally, about herself.’

You - Switchfoot with a montage of A Walk to Remember

This song always makes me cry, but makes me feel better when I’m upset too.

Trying to convince myself that watching The Princess Diaries in Italian with Italian subtitles is helping me learn the language because it is just so much fun.

I just watched the Italian film La siciliana ribelle (The Italian Girl) directed by Marco Amenta, starring Veronica d’Agostino as Rita Atria, and Gérard Jugnot as the Prosecutor. Based on a true story, it chronicles Rita Atria’s life as a key witness in a major mafia investigation in Sicily. ‘Beginning in 1985 in Balata, Sicily, the eleven-year-old Rita Mancuso witnessed the assassination of her beloved father Don Michele by a rival Mafia family. Six years later, her brother is killed by the Mafia as well. Determined to avenge the murders, she decides to break the code of silence and goes to an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Palermo with her detailed diaries to be used as evidence. Being forced to flee her village, she is put into witness protection and transferred to a safe house in Rome.’

It was a pretty good film, but has put me in such a weird mood. I feel so grateful and blessed for the safe family and country I have been born into; but at the same time, excited to travel; especially to explore Italy, France, and Germany. There is so much art and history and culture in Europe that cannot be found in such a young and small country as New Zealand; but with that opportunity and possibility comes the unknown. It becomes so overwhelming that sometimes I wish I was doing something with my life that was clear and directed; that I would know exactly what I was going to be doing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.