Light of My Eyes (2001)

Light of My Eyes is May selection in The Film Movement Series. Winner for Best Actor and Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, Light of My Eyes was also nominated for 8 David di Donatello Awards including Best Film. Antonio is a fallen angel, a rootless chauffeur in Rome, who relates only to the lonely heroes in the pulp science fiction novels he grew up with. Only through a chance encounter with Maria, a woman struggling to hold onto her daughter and her business, does he discover a hope thats been lacking in his detached existence. Antonio is drawn into the suffering of Marias world, where she draws her inner strength from her fragile solitude. A haunting score, poetic atmosphere and award-winning lyrical performances by the two leads evoke the beauty of a precarious existence. Subscribers to Film Movement receive an award-winning film such as Light of My Eyes to own on DVD each month. Product Description

You will feel good

Actually the less said the better. This is a very good movie and it is going to surprise most people who buy it. Formulaic, maybe, but you would have to be too much the pessimist to find that a problem. March 29, 2008

Loneliness, Alienation, Desire and Need: A Quasi Romance

LIGHT OF MY EYES ('Luce dei miei occhi') is more a fantasia on theme of loneliness and need for love than it is a straightforward narrative story. Under the direction of Giuseppe Piccioni, who co-wrote the screenplay with Umberto Contarello, it shimmers like and extended poem, a theme so delicate and so suffused with melancholy that it remains as an echo long after the film is over.

Antonio (Luigi Lo Cascio) is a sweet dreamer who respects his station in life as a chauffeur for customers about Rome, following the rule of 'Know when to talk and when to shut up' his boss has set as the standard. In his lonely ennui Antonio narrates his life in a voice-over monologue as a man named Morgan, a character with whom he identifies from his science fiction novel. His life takes on some meaning when he prevents an accident from happening with a young girl Lisa (Barbara Valente) who lives a lonely life with her lonely mother Maria (Sandra Ceccarelli) whose life is divided among making a living in a not too successful frozen food shop, a frustrating sexual attachment to a cold married man, and trying to hold her little home together since her husband's absence. Gradually Antonio's act of protecting Lisa is acknowledged by Maria and while Antonio is quite taken with the distant Maria, Maria thanks him in a brief and passionate but isolated sexual experience. Maria is needy, Antonio is needy, Lisa is needy, but somehow the connection cannot be made: Maria must concentrate on her lack of income to support Lisa.

Antonio, seeing the need to assist Maria's financial situation, allows himself to accept a chauffeur job that involves illegal smuggling of foreigners. Maria's response to her desperate situation is to allow Lisa to be cared for by her grandparents. In a moment suggestive of the old Christmas tale where the man buys combs for his wife's hair while the wife sells her hair to by a gift for her husband, Maria and Antonio face the misunderstanding of their 'friendship' and all seems lost until each changes a significant event that opens a communal door of caring and hope for something more for the little trio.

Both Lo Cascio and Ceccarelli are fine actors and make these difficult roles wholly credible. The atmosphere of the film is well defined by the adroit camera work of Arnaldo Catinari and enhanced by the musical score by Ludovico Einaudi. This is one of those very small films that may evade the casual filmgoer not only due to the inappropriately poor DVD cover art but also by the lack of proper promotion. It is a word of mouth success in this country. In Italian with English subtitles. Grady Harp, February 08 February 17, 2008

Emotionally Alienated

Director Giuseppe Piccioni directed "Light of My Eyes." He followed this with "The Life I Want" in 2004. This film follows three main characters. Antonio is played by Luigi LoCascio. Antonio is a chauffeur who looks on others much as the alien invaders in the pulp fiction novels he reads, people landing as if from another planet with little relation to himself. Barbara Valente plays the daughter Lisa. Valente has some nice reactions, but mostly is a cardboard teenager whose world we never really enter. This was the only film credit I could find for her. Her mother Maria is played by Sandra Ceccarelli, a self-absorbed woman who obsesses over an apparent affair with a married man who is unable to give her emotional satisfaction. She frets endlessly over the telephone, ignoring birthday parties and having social services intervene to relocate her daughter with the grandparents. Early in their relationship, Antonio stays over and makes love to Maria. From there, the film cools off. The emotionally alienated characters revolve around each other, not really connecting, until the last frames of the film that might imply a relationship. LoCascio and Ceccarelli won Best Actor/Actress awards at the Venice Film Festival. "Light of My Eyes" is an interesting film, but at times seems frustrating and trivial as neither character has an ideal that is larger than themselves for which to strive. As a result, they become endlessly self-absorbed about the details of their lives, which wound up being more fascinating to Piccioni than to me.

The Film Movement DVD adds a short called "Dreamscapes" by Sean McBride. McBride interviewed a number of people about their dreams. He blends them in otherworldly animated images. It didn't leave me with any particularly memorable experience.


August 18, 2007

Almost a love story

Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli won best actor and actress awards at the Venice Film Festival for their roles in this unusual story about two urban souls who find each other and then don't fall in love as conventional movie stories lead us to expect. What develops instead is a kind of friendship, as he patiently insinuates himself into her life and the life of her young daughter, then the life of a shady benefactor, with seemingly no ulterior motives than to connect to other people and ward off his loneliness. His only friends are the fellow drivers and his boss at an elite chauffeur service. She, on the other hand, is struggling to operate a frozen food store while attempting to maintain the good will of children's services social workers who are monitoring her worthiness as a mother.

His loneliness and isolation are characterized by the fictional hero of an earthling in a science fiction novel he is reading, who wanders the universe and puzzles over how beings might invade the bodies of others, while being unable to remember the past of the lives they have assumed. "You are too sentimental," the woman tells him when she rejects his affections. Meanwhile, as a driver and errand-runner, he becomes slowly involved in the trafficking of illegal workers, risking all the while the loss of his own job.

Told slowly and with unexpected turns, the story is a fascinating study of people you walk by on the street every day, their faces a study in hidden sorrows, fears and hopes. As an almost-love story, it achieves a kind of resolution between mismatched people without using romance to do it. In that way, it refuses to be escapist entertainment and illustrates more truthfully the human condition. September 15, 2006

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