As the film’s co-writer, director and star, Italian polymath Sergio Castellitto gets full credit for creating a detestable monster of a man in the foreign melodrama “Don’t Move.”
The problem for Castellitto – if he wants people to spread a good word about his creation – is that he doesn’t seem to believe his character is a jerk. “Don’t Move” is constructed as if we should feel sympathetic toward Timoteo – after he has raped a poor stranger, hired her as a prostitute, strung her along as an impregnated mistress, then brutalized and frozen out his wife and gradually humiliated his daughter.
“Don’t Move” might work if Castellitto ever tried to expose the deep cruelty and painful deception of this upper-class louse. Instead, Timoteo feeds on the pain he has caused others and calls it redemption. When the plot offers him a moment of grace, he takes it to mean the suffering of others was a gift intended for him.
The result is a set of sharply drawn characters that would be interesting if they weren’t so insufferable.
The story is told in a nested set of flashbacks, each one aimed at taking us deeper inside Timoteo’s drama. We begin at a hospital, where Timoteo is a surgeon, suddenly placed on the opposite end of the waiting room: A colleague informs him his teenage daughter has just arrived with a life-threatening head trauma.
Timoteo looks out the window in agony, and thinks he sees a woman with a familiar, iconic handbag. This flashes him back to his early married life, as his car breaks down in a strange spot and he meets a poor working girl named Italia.
This is the hook aimed at American audiences: The mousy temptress is played by Penelope Cruz, who apparently wanted to chew some scenery with blackened teeth and streetwalking miniskirts. Timoteo’s younger self promptly rapes her, for no reason. Oh wait, it’s hot outside, which apparently drives people in Mediterranean climes crazy.
Timoteo’s idea of assuaging his guilt is to turn Italia into a prostitute. He comes back, and pays, and continues a pattern of sex that borders on rape each time. We’re supposed to believe Italia slowly grows to love him. I would blame this male post-rape fantasy on Castellitto, except the idea comes from a book written by his wife, Margaret Mazzantini, who co-wrote the screenplay.
Another flashback tells us we can blame all this bad behavior on Timoteo’s childhood, when his father abandoned the family. As an adult, Timoteo explains it this way: “We’re all cruel. Some more, some less.”
Perhaps true. But there’s less, and then there’s much, much more. The grown-up Timoteo takes care of the “more” part by bashing Italia in the face and kicking his in-laws’ dog.
Too bad for Cruz that this can’t be her breakthrough acting role. She is never given much to do except pout, or suffer silently through Timoteo’s assaults.
As for Castellitto, what his production company calls a love story leaves a lot behind in the translation.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“Don’t Move”
NOT RATED but contains a rape, graphic sexual situations, language and other disturbing themes|1 hour, 59 minutes|DRAMA|Directed by Sergio Castellitto, in Italian with subtitles, written by Castellitto and Margaret Mazzantini from her novel; starring Penelope Cruz, Castellitto and Claudia Gerini |Opens today at the Mayan Theatre.
