Brucio nel vento (2002)

English Title: Burning in the Wind.
Synopsis: A hungarian immigrant in Switzerland meets an acquaintance from his childhood years who has a bond with him that is known only by him.
Appraisal: The weakest point of this film's plot is that Tobias's obsession with Line has very poorly explained motivation; also, his stalking behavior seems quite absurd. Once one accepts it, it's not so hard to watch the movie. It's very well directed and the actor that plays Tobias has a strong cinematic presence, put to good use by the director. But don't kid yourself, this is a melodrama, thinly disguised by some literary flourishes provided by the reading in voiceover of some of Tobias's writings. After I read a very concise biography of the author of the source novel, the film's plot struck me as a woman's fantasy about her past. Tobias's character has very little human consistency into him -- he is probably a projection of the novelist's frustrations and sufferings relating to her past. In fact, the only character closely resembling a real person here is Janek, Tobias's friend who is always hungry. This film's flaw, to put it shortly, is that it has shallow characters, and perhaps the filmmaker is conscious of this, since he, in a sort of faulty act probably, has recurrently displayed a certain type of event in the movie that works finely as a metaphor for shallowness and unachievement; I won't reveal it here because it would be a spoiler.
Rating: 50