The Double Hour: movie review
“The Double Hour” is the first feature from director Giuseppe Capotondi, a former philosophy student who looks as if he’s still at it. Actually, pseudo-philosophy is more like it. He’s made a psychological thriller that is very heavy on the mumbo-jumbo.
Sonia (the talented Ksenia Rappoport), a Slovenian immigrant working as a chambermaid in a fancy hotel in Turin, Italy, hooks up with the hale ex-cop Guido (Filippo Timi, who was marvelous as Mussolini in “Vincere”) at a dating club. Things are looking good when suddenly tragedy, as they say, strikes – but whose tragedy is it, in what world, and why?
Capotondi keeps circling his movie in and out of dream states and waking states as the whodunit morphs into who-cares-who-dunit? It’s reassuring, I suppose, to know that Hollywood isn’t the only place these days that’s turning out multiple-mind fantasias (“The Adjustment Bureau,” “Source Code,” et al.). But I’m starting to feel an intense nostalgia for linear storytelling. Grade: B- (Not rated.)
