The Unknown Woman

The Unknown Woman by Guiseppe Tornatore follows ex-prostitute Irena who is hiding from her past life. Irena moved to Italy after escaping the horrible life of prostitution in the Ukraine. Irena gets a job as a cleaning woman at an apartment. She does this to get closer to a family she believes has adopted her daughter, Thea. Irena does what she has to do to get closer to Thea. Which includes hospitalizing her current nanny by tripping her down a flight of stairs, and sifting through their garbage to see what meals the family eats.

She learns that Thea has an "illness" where she does not guard herself when falling. While her parents are away Irena teaches Thea how to defend herself by tying her up and pushing her onto a bed of pillows, then onto the bare wood floors. This actually brings them closer together after Thea gets over the anger of being pushed down over and over.

Irena's pimp, whom she believe she had killed, wanted her to know he knew where she was and had her savagely beaten. After not showing up to work for weeks, she returns and almost loses Thea. After this Thea's mother fires her, growing suspicious of Irena. Irena's pimp shows up in her apartment, and threatens her to return the money she stole from him. The next day Thea's mother turns up dead.

To Irena's delight Thea's father asks Irena if she could take care of Thea full time, but soon after Irena is questioned by the cops. She reveals her whole story. Irena had gone through a dozen pregnancies and abortions while she was a prostitute. The last child she had was from her lover who was killed by her pimp, and this child was the last one she had before the child told her she would be unable to become pregnant again. After begging to find out the name of who adopted her child, her pimp just made up a last name. The fact that Thea was adopted and around the same age was just a coincidence, she was not her daughter. Irena went to jail, but after she got out Thea was there to meet her.

The Unknown Woman was about Irena's struggle to become free and obtain all she ever wanted, which was the child she bore with her late lover. However, like the everything else in Irenas life, it was taken away from her and never returned. She was striving to get back the piece of her life that made her happy. It wasn't Thea. Irena had a dozen children she could try and locate, but she chose the daughter of her lover so she could have a part of him back.

The movie had plenty of twists and turns that weren't easy to predict, which is something you can't say about most modern movies. It was paced well, and you could feel Irenas urgency in every scene. You could sense her imbalance, and unfamiliarity with the world outside the jail that had been her bedroom.

Blue

Blue is a 1993 French film by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. It is part of a trilogy of films, called Trois Couleurs. The film follows the story of a woman, named Julie, who loses everything in a tragic accident. She is the sole survivor of her quaint family -- daughter Anna and husband Patrice de Courcy, famed composer, are killed in the accident. Her immediate reaction is to attempt to join them by trying to commit suicide in the very hospital in which she is recovering. When she finds herself unable to follow through, she "kills" herself in a different way. Completely withdrawing from her former life and severing all her ties, she attempts to cut off ties to society at large, living completely alone in Paris. She destroys her husband's final unfinished composition in a symbolic act, hoping to destroy her past life and keep herself completely isolated from the world.

She befriends a prostitute named Lucille who is living nearby. Despite Julie's attempts to remain isolated, however, she is drawn back into her old world: another composer, Olivier, announces he will attempt to finish Julie's husband's work, as it is important and symbolic to the post-Cold War peace in Europe. Olivier, a family friend prior to the crash, is in love with Juliette and suspects the husband's composition is actually Julie's work. He helps to force Julie to realize her quest for pure isolation and disposal of the past is impossible. A revelation about her husband Patrice also inspired this process; Julie learns her husband was in the midst of an affair at the time of his death. When she finds the object of his affair, she learns that the woman is pregnant with her husband's child. She gives the woman her husband's house. By the end of the film, Julie has learned that escaping pain by numbing it out of oneself is impossible, and she has re-immersed herself into her former world, crying for the first time as she listens to the final composition of her husband.

Blue was an uninteresting movie, that lacked any kind of subtlety. Any time Julie had any type of significant thought the music would rise drastically while the video faded out. As if the audience would not understand when something important dawned on Julie's mind. This experimental editing only detracted from the movie, which was paced to slowly to keep interest in. Julies character did suffer a travesty early on in the film, but it doesn't explain her completely robotic emotions for most of the movie. Especially since she does get emotional at the smallest remembrance of her daughter and husband, such as when she finds her daughters blue light. Yet even when she is alone she refuses to show any remembrance of her husband or daughter. She abandons her old home at the drop of the hat.

Talk To Her

Talk To Her is a Spanish film by director Pedro Almodovar. It follows two men Benigno, and Marco, who both fall in love with women who end up in comas. Benigno falls in love with a dancer named Alicia. He watches her in the dance studio from his apartment across the street. After finally getting to meet her, he sets up a meeting to see her psychiatrist father so that he might get to talk to her once more. It backfires when she walks out of the shower and is frightened from seeing him in her apartment, but this doesn't matter since the next time Benigno sees her she is in a coma from an accident. Being a male nurse, Benigno becomes her private nurse so that he can spend all the time he wants with Alicia. Everyday he has a one sided love life with the motionless woman on the hotel bed.

Benigno takes on Alicias hobbies to feel a stronger connection to her. One of her favorite past times was to watch silent movies. While watching a silent movie on his night off Benigno sits next to a man who is moved to tears by the film. The man he sits next to is Marco. Marco is a travel journalist who was still hurt from a relationship that ended over a decade ago. Yet Marco meets a female bull fighter who he falls in love with. One day Lydia is injured during a bull fight which puts her into a coma.

Benigno recognizes Marco from the theater, and becomes friends with him while he visits Lydia in the hospital. Lydia eventually passes away, and Marco sets off to start writing again. Benigno becomes confused with his feelings after watching a silent movie one night, and rapes Alicia. Alicia becomes pregnant, and the hospital staff finds out it was Benigno. After Benigno is sent to jail Marco returns to help his friend. Marco finds out for Benigno that Alicia has woken from her coma, but the pregnancy had been terminated, but does not tell him. Marco realizes to late that Benigno plans to kill himself, and isn't in time to stop his friend.

The main theme of Talk To Her was detachment. Benigno became detached from reality, not being able to realize that his romance with Alicia was completely one sided. He became detached with the rest of society when he spent all of his life taking care of his sick mother, and then Alicia. Marco felt detached from his relationship with Lydia since he was still dealing with issues from his first love.

Talk To Her was not a feel good movie. The characters were incredibly deep, and easy to empathize with. Even Benigno who was a borderline mentally challenged rapist was still charming. Despite his creepy actions it was easy to see Benigno was basically harmless. Actually, if he hadn't raped Alicia she may have never woken up from her coma.