When we are first introduced to the unassuming "Titta" (Tony Servillo) we do have to wonder what could possibly fill the next hundred minutes. He lives from day to day out of an hotel room, and a budget hotel room at that, offering some internal observations of many he sees but talking to no-one. Then, like a bolt of lightning, he encounters barmaid "Sofia" (Olivia Magnani) and she seems to have quite a magnetic effect on him. He begins to actually speak with her and that's when his defences of silence and solitude begin to lower and we begin to learn of his former connections with the Mafia and of the reasons for his comfortable, but lonely, incarceration. Now that he has put his head above the parapet after eight years, though, his now more public profile starts to attract some unwelcome attention that proves likely to have perilous consequences if he isn't careful - and not just for him. This isn't a film that races along, nor is there a surfeit of dialogue. Instead, this is a stylish film to look at with gently bubbling noirish elements as the characters are carefully developed and the plot proceeds in a largely unexpected fashion. Servillo is a master at the less-is-more style of presentation, and here his glances and inflexions compensate for his own welcome dearth of verbiage and as Magnani starts to get a little more of the thread, we start to see a love story of unlikely proportions develop and quite profoundly change the direction of their lives. There are tiny degrees of menace accruing thanks to a dodgy bank manager, a ruthless assassin clad in a tracksuit and to a depiction of organised crime that isn't quite as described by Mario Puzo and I must confess to finding the final scene mildly amusing (and fitting) in a slushy sense. Maybe it would have looked better in black and white?
