Voice from cineuropa wrote:
Ferzan Ozpetek deploys a star cast in his dazzling film set in a dressmaker’s for film and theatre, where the fates of its female employees interweave while fulfilling an important order

As often happens with the Turkish-Italian director, there’s also an autobiographical impetus behind this his 15th film. On this occasion, Ozpetek goes back to the early ‘80s when he worked as an assistant director and frequented film and theatre dressmakers, meeting the greatest costume designers, director and actors of the period, against a backdrop of mannequins, sewing machines and fabric scraps. That said, the film opens in the present-day: gathered around the usual, sumptuously decked table is a group of women whose faces we progressively recognise. They’re famous actresses who have all starred in the director’s previous films: Luisa Ranieri, Jasmine Trinca, Nicole Grimaudo, Paola Minaccioni, Elena Sofia Ricci, Lunetta Savino, Aurora Giovinazzo, Milena Vukotic, Carla Signoris, Anna Ferzetti and Loredana Cannata, in addition to new entries Vanessa Scalera, Geppi Cucciari, Milena Mancini, Sara Bosi and Mara Venier. They’ve been called together by Ozpetek himself, who’s appearing in one of his films for the very first time, developing his next work alongside them.

So it is, therefore, that between a plate of pasta, a read-through, and a little playful banter (“so, what are you planning to do with this vaginadrome?”), we’re catapulted back to 1974, inside the walls of a splendid dressmaker’s directed by two diametrically opposed sisters, one of them determined and slightly despotic, the other more fragile and tormented, played by Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca (the former now on her fourth Ozpetek films, the latter rewarded with a David di Donatello trophy for her role in The Goddess of Fortune [+]). An important order comes in for a huge film set in the eighteenth century: the costume designer (Vanessa Scalera) is an Oscar winner and the director (Stefano Accorsi, also on his fourth Ozpetek film) is incredibly demanding. The dressmakers get to work; they don’t have much time, but plenty to contend with, including a rivalry between two prima donnas who should be prevented from crossing paths when trying on their costumes, at all costs. And each of them has their own problems at home too, whether a violent husband, a tricky son or eternally insufficient funds… But these women are like diamonds: they’re not easily broken.

Diamanti lasts 135 minutes, and the time flies by. The cast is well-matched, the actresses are all brilliant and well-centred, and even the smallest roles add value. Then, there are the dazzling outfits: the film’s costumes come courtesy of Stefano Ciammitti (of Io capitano [+] and the Netflix series The Law According to Lidia Poët), to whom the upcoming David di Donatello trophy will undoubtedly fly. There’s a little bit of everything in the film: humour and drama, sisterhood and competition, grave losses, loves that might have been, secret relationships, and singing and dancing to tunes by Patty Pravo and the unmistakeable Mina… In short, the full breadth of Ozpetek’s universe in its most sensational form, dedicated to three diamonds of Italian film: Mariangela Melato, Virna Lisi and Monica Vitti.

Diamanti.2024.1080p.NOWTV.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-BLOOM.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 9 min
Size: 	3.12 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 052 kb/s
BPP: 	0.059
Audio
#1:  	Italian 5.1ch E-AC-3 @ 192 kb/s
#2:  	English 5.1ch E-AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/63306E88D362DFD/Diamanti.2024.1080p.NOWTV.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-BLOOM.mkv

Language(s):Italian English
Subtitles:Italian

The post Ferzan Özpetek – Diamanti AKA Diamonds (2024) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The sympathetically drawn, unthreatening gay characters here are practically an advertisement for this hot political topic. Abroad, the film’s biggest selling point, as with “Steam: The Turkish Bath” and “Ignorant Fairies,” is its relaxed, modern approach to gay characters and lifestyle, unusual for an Italian film. The mix of straight and gay stories, though, should broaden its appeal to a slightly wider niche.

Outgoing, gorgeous 30-year-old Lorenzo (Luca Argentero) is the live-in partner of successful author Davide (Pierfrancesco Favino). They happily spend their time with a circle of intimates: Antonio (Stefano Accorsi) and Angelica (Margherita Buy), a married couple with kids; sunny cokehead Roberta (Ambra Angiolini); Davide’s acerbic ex Sergio (Ennio Fantastichini) and equally biting friend Neval (Serra Yilmaz) and her policeman husband (Filippo Timi); and newcomer Paolo (Michelangelo Tommaso).
First part of the film struggles to bring these ill-matched friends into focus, making much ado about their ferocious loyalty to each other. But there is little storyline on which to hang the characters’ quirks, until Lorenzo is rushed to the hospital one night with a cerebral hemorrhage, leading to a warm and fuzzy, but quite moving, group mourning scene, played against the odd counterpoint of dance music.

Brought together by the emergency, the group becomes more interesting to watch and size up. The cloudless relationship between Lorenzo and Davide, forcibly interrupted by illness, stands in sharp contrast to the stormy breakup of Antonio and Angelica, when the former guilelessly confesses he is having an affair with another woman (Isabella Ferrari.)
The sudden appearance of Lorenzo’s estranged father (Luigi Diberti) adds another, more traditional perspective as he belatedly attempts to come to terms with his son’s homosexuality. One of the best-written and -acted characters is his second wife Minnie (Lunetta Savino), a lighthearted provincial woman of blunt words.

Ozpetek shows a confident, light touch in directing the large cast, so neatly balanced that no one really stands out. Stars Favino, Accorsi and Buy are able players unable to soar in rather abstract roles. Other characters, like Yilmaz’s Turkish friend and Milena Vukotic’s head nurse, are pleasant enough to watch but undeveloped.Tech work goes for a clean, somewhat bland look, underlined by Massimiliano Nocente’s elegantly appointed Italian interiors where nothing is out of place, children’s rooms included. In marked contrast to Gianfilippo Corticelli’s classy and at times highly expressive lensing, the soundtrack by Giovanni Pellini (aka Neffa) takes a positively kinky approach to the drama, with a heavy emphasis on lively Spanish and French-sounding tunes.

(Variety)

704MB | 01:46:08 | 640×272 | avi

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Language:Italian
Subtitles:English

The post Ferzan Ozpetek – Saturno contro AKA Saturn in Opposition (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Elena and Antonio are not made for each other: they are too different, in terms of character, life choices, worldview and the way they relate to others. They are total opposites. However they are overwhelmed by a mutual attraction that they should avoid. Not only because they are not compatible, but also because Elena is engaged to Giorgio, and Antonio is engaged to Silvia, who is Elena’s best friend. Plus Fabio, the young Elena’s best friend, hates Antonio because he is openly homophobic. Initially, between Elena and Antonio, there is physical attraction and this is the first real turbulence in Elena’s life. Everyone will have to deal with the unexpected in a sudden storm of passion that changes all the rules of the game of their relationships. However this will not be the only turbulence in Elena’s life…

1.46GB | 1h 46mn | 720×304 | avi

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Language(s):Italian
Subtitles:English Italian

The post Ferzan Ozpetek – Allacciate le cinture (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Written by Boyd van Hoeij
Thursday, 20 April 2006

Nothing less than a double suicide from a dazzling height initiates the fifth and by far best film of Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek. With an equally dazzling central performance by another foreigner settled in Italy, Slovakian actress Barbora Bobulova, Cuore sacro (Sacred Heart) could very well win Ozpetek new fans at home and abroad as he forsakes his overly sentimental style for something both more subtle and more resonant.

Co-written and directed by Ozpetek, Cuore sacro is an exploration of goodness and religion and how they interact (and more often than not fail to interact) in Italian society in particular and the world at large. Unlike the director’s previous efforts (such as much laurelled La finestra di fronte/Facing window) there are no homosexual or otherwise marginalised or penniless protagonists; in Cuore sacro it is in fact fundamental that the main character is rich, at least at the start of the story.

Businesswoman Irene (Bobulova) has just won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award when she meets a small and apparently innocent girl called Benny, who soon reveals herself to be a small time crook. Irene’s motherly instincts are awakened by both the girl and a visit to her late parents’ former palazzo, but as she tries to teach Benny about right and wrong, a grave accident quickly turns the tables and instead it is Irene who will be re-examining the issues she thought she was so fit to teach.

The story seems perfect fodder for an Italian melodrama of epic proportions but Ozpetek — guilty of exactly that in his previous effort — here opts for a more restrained approach that pays off double. His actors tap not only into the humanity of their characters but especially their groundedness, something which is very much needed to make the later, more ethereal sections fly. Bobulova is credible all the way through, from cold, blue-eyed businesswoman to her drastic transformation later on in the film, whilst the little Camille Dugay Comencini almost gives Bobulova a run for her money; despite her age she is able to imbue Benny with the necessary edge that easily makes her overcome what could have been the stereotypical “child as angelic vessel of goodness” role.

Gianfilippo Corticelli’s crystal clear cinematography (reminiscent of his work on Sergio Castellito’s recent Non ti muovere/Don’t move) further helps to set Cuore sacro aside from its Italian made-for-TV colleagues and is at times positively Shyamalanian in the tension it knows to generate from seemingly nothing. Except for the synthesiser-driven musical score (essentially a copy-and-paste job from La finestra di fronte), all technical contributions are excellent.

Cuore sacro is a stunner in many ways, firstly because it shows us a whole new level of subtlety in the universe of Ozpetek and co-writer and producer Gianni Romoli and secondly because, despite its poster image that evokes the worst of Catholic kitsch and its horrible title, Cuore sacro has a complicated message at its heart but weaves its plot, characters and its arguments ever so elegantly into a satisfying whole.

+Commentary ( No English subtitles)

1.48GB | 1h 53mn | 714×430 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/628875173CBC7E9/Sacred.Heart.2005.DVDRip.x264.AC3-DEEP.mkv

Language(s):Italian
Subtitles:English,Italian

The post Ferzan Ozpetek – Cuore Sacro AKA Sacred Heart (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Giovanna is a bookeeper in a company which packs chickens. She is married to a man who has a precarious job. First she starts being curious about a young man who lives in the block opposite hers, and then she falls in love with him. The relationship between the two becomes much stronger when she starts to find out more about him from an old man who bursts into their lives. The old man, obsessed with the memories of some things that happened n the long past autumn of 1943, has lost his memory and finds refuge in Giovanna.
“Facing Windows (La Finestra di fronte)” is like a very European and more sophisticated take on “The Notebook,” as it shifts between romantic and culinary past and present through the in-and-out consciousness of an elderly man. The “Rear Window” eroticism is just one element that accidentally brings together tangled, stymied lives swirling around lovely, exhausted, frustrated chef, wife and mother Giovanna Mezzogiorno, where each child, man, woman, friend and neighbor has separate priorities and fantasies that annoying real life interferes with, from the practical to the political.
Each character and their ties are both delightfully and surprisingly complex and the actors are so comfortable bringing each to complete life that you think you too should be able to come out of the theater speaking Italian so naturally. But this is a frank, gritty, contemporary, urban Italy we don’t usually get to see, with multi-racial immigrants, underemployment and a Fascist past. IMDB comment

6123MB | 1:40:13 | 640×272 | avi

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Language:Italian
Subtitles:English (vobsub)

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The post Ferzan Ozpetek – La Finestra di fronte aka The Window Opposite (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
When Antonia’s husband Massimo is killed in a car accident, she accidentally discovers that he has been having a same-sex affair with a produce wholesaler named Michele. Although she’s initially devastated by the news and hostile toward Michele, she soon develops a friendship with him and his and Massimo’s circle of gay, transgender, and straight friends, among whom are a Turkish immigrant, a playwright and a boutique owner. As she gets to know these people and become a part of their lives, the new relationships dramatically transform Antonia.

http://nitroflare.com/view/1D44785BA2FD43F/Ferzan_Ozpetek_-_%282001%29_His_Secret_Life.mkv

Language(s):Italian, Turkish
Subtitles:Italian, English, French, German

The post Ferzan Ozpetek – Le fate ignoranti AKA His Secret Life (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The only dream of Pietro is to become a famous actor. 28 year-old Pietro is so obsessed with becoming an actor that he does not mind trying every single way. He comes Rome and starts to work in a bakery. Also, at the same time, he tries to be an actor. At first, he stays with his cousin, Maria , but then he rents a house. Nevertheless, in a short time, something weird happens at the house. As if the furniture moves by itself. Then he realizes that the house was haunted by some ghosts, so with it, the adventure itself begins.

2.19GB | 1h 46m | 1280×546 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/977F8688F942506/Magnifica_Presenza_(2012)_BDrip_720p_ITA_-_Sub_ENG-ITA.mkv

Language:Italian
Subtitles:English,Italian

The post Ferzan Ozpetek – Magnifica presenza AKA Magnificent Presence (2012) first appeared on Cinema of the World.