Movie Review: Don't Move

By Achy Obejas, Special to the Tribune

1 star

The sin of "Don't Move," a beautifully shot, marvelously acted but ultimately frustrating offering from Italian actor/director Sergio Castellitto, is its central conceit: that a man can be redeemed through the love of a woman he rapes.

The problem is not political; the premise, as played out here, is simply preposterous. "Don't Move," based on a screenplay co-written by Castellito and his wife, Margaret Mazzantini (adapted from her novel), tells the story of Timoteo (Castellito), a successful Italian surgeon whose daughter is brought in for emergency medical treatment after a potentially fatal motorcycle accident. As the daughter hangs on the threshold between life and death, Timoteo flashes back to events that led to her birth.

These begin when Timoteo meets a dead-end woman, poor and uneducated, named Italia (oh, boy). Played by Penelope Cruz - superbly and against type - Italia lives in the shadow of a great, always unfinished apartment complex with a fluttering banner advertising new luxury condos. We instantly understand how out of reach they really are, how empty and forbidding, too.

The affair begins when his car breaks down and he asks to use her phone. After his car is fixed, when he'll be able to flee, he comes back and ravishes Italia. The rape is straightforward: She mildly resists, he insists, she does not cry for help or fight much, he leaves.

There is no ambiguity in the act. At home - an elegant seaside apartment with fluttering linen curtains - Timoteo takes a stick and writes on the sand: "I have raped a woman." His wife (Claudia Gerini, who transforms her essentially bitchy, spoiled character into someone nuanced and remarkably sympathetic) steps over the confession unawares and dives into the sparkling foam.

Next, Timoteo returns to Italia, ostensibly to apologize, but instead repeats the experience. There is a coldness, a barely contained rage to the lovemaking, desperate and joyless. Yet director Castellitto would have us believe something consensual evolves in the relationship. We see her telling him, "Keep me whatever you do, keep me." He fixes a screen on a door (torn during the second rape); eventually, he believes he has fallen in love with her. When she gets pregnant, he initially wants an abortion, then decides against it, then is crestfallen when she has one anyway.

There is much to like, much to be touched by, in particular moments of this film. But the director expects us to suspend disbelief to an impossible level. Italia is relentlessly, inhumanly masochistic. Though Castellito imposes a turgid, claustrophobic identification with his main character, it's almost impossible to not be repulsed by his egotism and self-pity.

"Don't Move" is manipulative in the extreme. The ending in particular, with Italia as Timoteo's guardian angel, simply defies decency.

"Don't Move" ("Non ti Muovere")

Directed by Sergio Castellitto; screenplay and story by Margaret Mazzantini and Sergio Castellitto; photographed by Gianfilippo Corticelli; edited by Patrizio Marone; music by Lucio Godoy; set designed by Francesco Frigeri; produced by Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini and Marco Chimenz. A Cattleya/Alquimia Cinema release; opens Friday, May 6. In Italian with English subtitles. Running time: 2:05. No MPAA rating (parents cautioned for adult situations).

Italia - Penelope Cruz

Timoteo - Sergio Castellitto

Elsa - Claudia Gerini

Ada - Angela Finocchiaro