The Double Hour: Promising material softened to mush

Filippo Timi in The Double Hour

Location Info

Map

Tower Theater

1508 SW 8th St.
Miami, FL 33135

Category: Movie Theaters

Region: Little Havana

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Details

Starring Filippo Timi, Ksenia Rappaport, and Gaetano Bruno. Directed by Giuseppe Capotondi. 105 min. Not Rated. Opens Friday at Tower Theater, 1508 SW Eighth St., Miami; 305-643-8706; mdc.edu/culture/tower.

Related Content

• 2012 Village Voice Film Critics' Poll
  January 3, 2013
• The Turin Horse at Miami Beach Cinematheque March 22
  March 22, 2012
• Berlin Discoveries: Greatness Emerges at the Year's First Major Film Festival
  February 21, 2013
• National Enquirer Family Feud Is Like The Godfather
  May 2, 2013
• McKeon's Musings: The Marlins Skipper Shares His Thoughts on the Debt Ceiling
  August 3, 2011

More About

• Giuseppe Capotondi
• Ksenia Rappoport
• The Double Hour
• Turin
• Filippo Timi

Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe's gray Turin sets the monotone of The Double Hour, while director Giuseppe Capotondi softens promising material to mush for the refined digestion of sophisto audiences. Guido (Filippo Timi, Vincere's Mussolini), a retired policeman turned security guard, is a habitué of speed-dating events, where he meets Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport), a hotel chambermaid. Their budding courtship, rendered in too-close closeups and grainy intimacy, is interrupted by a criminal act that, to Guido's friends on the force, seems all-too-coincidental. What follows, via narrative occlusions, flip-flops of sympathy, and close-to-the-vest performances, is an effort to tease the viewer along: Who knows what about whom, and when? What happened after that gunshot? Was that face in the security camera actually there? Capotondi, making his debut feature after a career in fashion photography and music videos, pays lip service to '70s Italian giallo — but giallo didn't sedate the Hollywood thriller model; it hot-wired it through its own bellicose, ironic style. Anomie presented in the jaded, straitjacketing mode of 21st-century Euro-realism, The Double Hour sustains a minimum of attention thanks to the naturally beguiling presence of long-stemmed Rappoport — but what might have a less cautious director done with the material?