Film Reviews by KL

Intriguing to watch again 20 years on now that Elena Ferrante (the screenwriter) is a lauded novelist and our familiarity with the mores and claustrophobia of Neopolitan family life that she chronicles is much greater. The film, like her novels, repays attention dealing as it does with repressed memory and indeed conflicting narratives of events. The marvellous tarantella that closes the film seems entirely fitting.

This film seems imbued with chiaroscuro; fascinated by the space between the dark and the light. Casanova as an Epicurean and a rationalist relishes life and endlessly describes experience. Dracula (who incidentally resembles a weird hedgehog) is primal and atavisitic moving simply from whispers to guttural howls. Both tempt. On the cusp of the cycle of life into death and back again ...