Film review: The Consequences of Love

Titta spends his days sitting in a hotel bar. Once a week, he receives a large suitcase full of money. There seems little else to his life, until he responds (or overreacts) to the attention of barmaid Sofia.

Not far from the end of this film, I was looking forward to extolling its virtues. Chief among them is that writer/director Paolo Sorrentino is thoroughly in control of his film; every scene is precisely shot, every brief flashback feels important, every part feels well-cast. He also laces the film with dry wit and is well-supported by good sub-titles for the Enlgish audience. I also appreciated the ambiguities, and a director who didn't feel compelled to hit the viewer over the head with motivations. I was confident that enough would be revealed in the end.

My problem was that the end of the film fell flat; it feels as if a piece of the puzzle is missing. What happens is clear enough* and most of the "why" is there, it's just that the "why" is rather under-whelming. There are enough cryptic signs that I could be missing something that a second viewing would reveal, and indeed Peter Bradshaw writes a sterling appreciation of the film that very much made me want to see it. I didn't get any real sense of Sofia's motives, or that Titta is repeating past mistakes or, really, why he makes the decision that he ultimately makes. So I nearly really enjoyed this film, but in the end I was disappointed. Shame, ebcause it was so damn stylish.

* With a couple of semi-important exceptions (SPOILERS):
1) Does Sofia's bizarrely under-motivated (a la North by Northwest) accident when she is on her way to meet Titta, or has she already decided not to? The order of scenes would suggest the latter, but then why show it at all?
2) Is that Sofia in the mall with the mustachioed man from the beginning of the film, or just someone else with the same coat that Titta mistakes for Sofia?