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Don't Move
European films have traditionally been more honest than Hollywood
pictures in depicting marital betrayals and sexual indiscretions, and the
pungent Italian drama Don't Move revives this vital tradition. As a middle-aged surgeon, Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto), waits at the bedside of his teenage daughter, who has been seriously injured in an accident, he remembers a fateful extramarital affair that ended just before his daughter was born. The rest of the film intercuts the present-day events with the tumultuous affair between Timoteo and Italia (Penelope Cruz), an Albanian woman whom he met when his car broke down. The flashbacks focus on sometimes brutal sexual encounters, as unbridled lust gradually gives way to tenderness. The craggy-faced Castellitto wins our sympathy for a very flawed character, and Cruz gives the best performance of her career as the slatternly mistress. In many of her movies she's been little more than decoration, and her acting abilities were in some doubt. She erases those doubts here with a hard-edged portrayal of a damaged woman. The heartrending conclusion lingers in the memory.
--Stephen Farber
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