Il trionfo dell’amore
Italy / England,
2001, 107 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
-
Clare Peploe
- prod
-
Bernardo Bertolucci
- scr
-
Bernardo Bertolucci, Clare Peploe, Marilyn Goldin
- cam
-
Fabio Cianchetti
- editor
-
Jacopo Quadri
- mus
-
Jason Osborn
- cast
-
Mira Sorvino, Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw, Jay Rodan, Rachael Stirling, Ignazio Oliva
- source
-
Paramount Classics, 5555 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038. FAX: 323-862-1103
-
COMMENTS
Mira Sorvino in person.
OTHER
Looking remarkably fresh and buoyant at almost 300 years of age, 18th-century French playwright Pierre Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love gets a simple, elegant overhaul from director Clare Peploe and her husband, Bernardo Bertolucci, here undertaking producer’s chores. Piloted by a spry and seductive star turn from Mira Sorvino and sterling support from Ben Kingsley and Fiona Shaw, this light, thoroughly entertaining comedy depicts a resourceful woman driven by honest, noble goals, who employs the dishonest tactics of deception and disguise to achieve them. Leonide (Sorvino) occupies a throne usurped years earlier by her father from its rightful owner, Agis. Having glimpsed Agis in all his naked splendor emerging from a stream, the princess falls hopelessly in love, making it her mission to secure him as a husband and see justice done by restoring him to his throne. Peploe fully embraces the piece’s innate theatricality and its light-operatic artifice, right down to a sung curtain call and the occasional appearance of a modern-day audience before the players. Throughout, Peploe playfully handles gender and empowerment issues, and offers this delightful portrait of a woman not just as a vessel for sentiment but a vehicle for justice, deliverance and even redemption; an astute schemer, strategist and conspirer, but one with compassion, conscience and a noble heart.
—David Rooney, Variety
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
