widescreenguy other than a very beautiful face (which ain't quite so good looking as it once was) that gets her jobs in fashion magazines slathered with makeup, what qualities does Ms Cruz have to get her on the big screen so often? her multilingual ability? maybe thats it. doing films in 4 different languages would increase the number of scripts available.maybe its those perky tits she likes to show off numerous times.this film was a definite disappointment. Im glad the local library has a big selection because if I had rented this one I would demand a refund.it jumps all over the place in location and date, full of surprises ie too much of an average thing, and is way too loaded with symbolism and lacks dialog which EXPLAINS wtf is going on in the film. gee, kinda like how is the viewer supposed to know what the message was in that scene/film if it lacks audio/visual CLUES ????? 'dont move' is said once in the film and has no bearing on the story, so what exactly is the story?

Dennis Littrell Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto, who also directed) plays a surgeon whose car breaks down in a working class neighborhood of a great Italian city. Italia (Penelope Cruz) is a denizen of this part of town who lets Timoteo use her phone. She works as a cleaner of hotel rooms. She is crude, a little desperate, uneducated and so passive that she more or less allows Timoteo to rape her, a rape that she experiences without emotion, as something that society perhaps has taught her to accept as her due. Timoteo comes back a day or two later to apologize. He says he was drunk. He had drunk two vials of cold vodka while waiting for a mechanic to fix his car.Italia sniffs at this privileged man who took advantage of her. There is nothing she can do. Her word against his. Just move on and forget it. But part of her is wondering if there is more to his interest than the quick gratification of lust.He takes her again, this time though, it is clear that his passion is especially for her. It is something about her that turns him into a sexual beast, and not just the fact that she is a woman who cannot complain. It is interesting to note that when he returns and catches her carrying groceries home, she looks at him with some inquiry on her face, nothing more, no anger, no recriminations, no judgments. When he apologizes and says he was drunk, she swiftly picks up her groceries and turns away. She was looking for something deeper from him. She wants the reason that he raped her to be NOT that he was drunk but that he was so drawn to her that he couldn't help himself.It is during the third scene a few days later that she accepts his passion for her and finds some of her own. And it is after this third scene as she serves him spaghetti that he realizes that he loves her. The moment comes when he reaches for the bottle of beer on the table at the same time she reaches to pour it for him. They accidentally tip the bottle over, spilling the beer onto the table and floor, and their hands meet. He holds her index finger in his hand for a moment, and it is at that moment that he knows he loves her. And she sees it in his eyes.All of this is shown in flashback as Timoteo awaits the fate of his daughter who has suffered a massive head injury from a motorcycle accident and lies in a coma in his hospital. His meeting with Italia took place some fifteen years previously, or I should say it was a relatively brief but ultra passionate love affair that ended fifteen years in the past at the time his daughter, from the womb of his wife, Elsa (Claudia Gerini), was born. It was his passion for Italia that spilled over into Elsa that brought about the conception. Ironically--and this is part of the terrible tragedy of this story--Italia too becomes pregnant at nearly the same time. What Timoteo does not realize until it is too late is the depth of feeling that Italia comes to have for him. This is a love affair that, to quote the words of LA Times film critic Kevin Thomas, "makes most of today's screen romances seem undernourished by comparison." Penelope Cruz's performance is nothing short of spectacular. I invite the reader to view the special feature on the DVD in which she discusses her character with Castellitto. Here we can see the incredible passion and attention to detail that Cruz brings to her performance, and also that of Castellitto, who is outstanding both as an actor and a director. Cruz, whose first language is Spanish, must become this noble wretch of desperate woman who must speak Italian with a street accent and behave in way that belies her great beauty and the fine finish of her own character. It is a shame that most Americans only know Cruz from some television commercials and being Tom Cruise's ex. Penelope Cruz is without question--and she proves it in this deeply moving performance--to be one of the finest actresses working today.A couple of other points. Elsa knows of course that her husband had fallen in love with someone else. She can sense it in the new passion he brings to making love to her. She can deduce it in his absences from her and from the change in his manner. But she never says a word. That is interesting. Perhaps she knows it will pass. And it does, but not before Timoteo performs a "marriage ceremony" at a hotel restaurant near the place of Italia's birth with Italia, and with the "reheated soup" and the wine and cheese as witnesses, and not before he fantasizes aloud with her of leaving his wife and newborn child and going to some far off place with her alone. Only tragedy, it would appear, prevents his leaving Elsa for the love of his life.But time does heal this wound to their marriage, as Timoteo prays that time will heal his daughter. And the passion of yesteryear perhaps is the more glorious because, like a portrait, it does not age. And perhaps there is some solace in knowing that the love that one finds in a wife and a life's companion is different than that found in a fiery mania of long ago, but taken in total, no less deeply felt.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Jonathon Kim This film has tone of emptiness, you feel you are floating inside of the main character, how he felt the life, those daily agitation, consumed feeling, anxiety and loneness at the same time. When his most unexpected time, at his mid-life crisis, he encounter a woman on the road, not quite attractive more frankly quite ugly, uneducated, lower class woman in Spain. As he forced her sex, he just passed the point of no return. His soul are starting to suffer from guilt, desire and denial. And he is starting to realize his life was vain as his fake identity simply known as surgeon, but he never been himself until just now.There is nothing new as far as romance goes, they are having an affair, fell in love, declare each others, then the tragic begins.What is extra ordinary about the film is, it is a love story from the male side, not from voice from female, its full of masculine and energy of male imagination. There are deep frustrations of modern day male, from what the society is pushing, and its hand-cupped male expectation,the pressure and revolt.The film denies all the traditional beauties what ordinary Hollywood love story offer in traditional grammar. There is no beautiful couple, they are all too real, they have ordinary body and soul, there is no "Titanic' or "Romeo & Juliette" style sacrifice, they are all too cruel to be lover as we are in real life. Also there is no scene that forcing you to cry.But this film will make you weep, not cry from eyes, but from the heart. It denies all the values what ordinary people would die for, fidelity, beauty and vanity, and in the end, it recovers the truth, that the love is real, no matter how it is tragic or sinful, it simply exists.Penelope is simply brilliant for the role, she shines every minutes in the film. If you have experienced or never experienced 'real' love, see this film, it will let you crave. for the truth.A crucified love story to save your soul.

gradyharp 'Non ti muovere' ('Don't Move') requires a lot from its audience - concentration, understanding about the extremes of control versus passion, and a willingness to stay with the nonlinear method of storytelling that novelist Margaret Mazzantini and screenwriter/director/star Sergio Castellitto have elected to use. This may be a little film about a few people, but the exposition of the story feels epic in its proportions (over two hours in length) and in the flamboyance of its production. In the end the demands of the film, in this viewer's mind, reward the viewer handsomely.The time is the present, a rainy day when a fifteen year old girl experiences a motorbike accident. The victim is immediately transported to the hospital where her head is shaved and she enters neurosurgery in what seems like a futile attempt to save her life. Coincidentally one of the prominent surgeons at the hospital is Timoteo (Sergio Castellitto) and he is informed by a staff nurse Ada (Angela Finocchiaro) that the victim is Timoteo's daughter. Devastated by watching his young child undergo surgery his mind flashes back to the time of her birth, a time when, married to a beautiful but cold woman Elsa (the beautiful and talented Claudia Gerini), he has an affair with a common woman Italia (an extraordinary performance by the gifted Penélope Cruz). Timoteo's usual controlled model surgeon and husband had thrown reason to the wind as he became obsessed with the raw passion of a sexually dominated relationship with the tacky appearing but genuine and emotionally abused Italia. Their relationship may have started with a rape but it develops despite the misgivings of both Timoteo and Italia into a profoundly felt love. Italia becomes pregnant, knowing that Timoteo is married: she is willing to take any part of him she can have as her only other memory of a relationship was an abusive one when her own father raped her as a young girl. Timoteo is conflicted: his wife Elsa becomes pregnant yet he wishes to run away with Italia. The wise but vulnerable Italia aborts her pregnancy and opens the door for the manner in which she works out her history with Timoteo. All of this story Timoteo confesses to his daughter Angela, lying comatose after her surgery. And all of the elements of the story coalesce.The performances by both Cruz and Castellitto won many awards and well deserved they are. Cruz proves that she is one of the most gifted actresses before the cameras today and it seems a shame that her Italian and Spanish movies acknowledge her gifts while her American movies place her in rather silly roles where her natural beauty seems to be more important.While this film is not without flaws, the power of becoming involved with the characters is sweepingly forceful. This may not be an easy movie to watch but committing to it intellectually is most rewarding. Grady Harp