The Double Hour: movie review
鈥�The Double Hour鈥� is the first feature from director Giuseppe Capotondi, a former philosophy student who looks as if he鈥檚 still at it. Actually, pseudo-philosophy is more like it. He鈥檚 made a psychological thriller that is very heavy on the mumbo-jumbo.
Sonia (the talented Ksenia Rappoport), a Slovenian immigrant working as a chambermaid in a fancy hotel in Turin, Italy, hooks up with the hale ex-cop Guido (Filippo Timi, who was marvelous as Mussolini in 鈥�Vincere鈥�) at a dating club. Things are looking good when suddenly tragedy, as they say, strikes 鈥� but whose tragedy is it, in what world, and why?
Capotondi keeps circling his movie in and out of dream states and waking states as the whodunit morphs into who-cares-who-dunit? It鈥檚 reassuring, I suppose, to know that Hollywood isn鈥檛 the only place these days that鈥檚 turning out multiple-mind fantasias (鈥�The Adjustment Bureau,鈥� 鈥�Source Code,鈥� et al.). But I鈥檓 starting to feel an intense nostalgia for linear storytelling. Grade: B- (Not rated.)
