jcnsoflorida Knowing of its cable provenance I rented this with mild trepidation. It bears a few telltale signs of Cable Drama 101 but manages at least partly to transcend. Mirren is superb as always and near the end even looked a little like Vivian Leigh. (Some credit due to costumes and makeup). Kudos to her for baring her breasts. The interesting surprise here is Olivier Martinez who is better than Warren Beatty in the 1961 original. WB was derailed by the Italian accent with which El Martinez has no problem. Also, Martinez is the right age for the part; WB was young and up-and-coming, wrong for the story. Both Mirren and Martinez seem to have been aware of the cable tendency towards obviousness because the best thing about the remake is the fact that they do bring layers and subtlety to their respective performances. Enough years have elapsed to make this is a period film, whereas the 1961 version was not. Any period film also has to finesse the sensibility of the time when it was made. This remake portrays the period fairly well and in some ways takes a rather fresh approach. Despite its shortcomings you too might find yourself liking it more than you thought you would. (2014)

Sphaeramundinyc In the character of the young man that follows Mrs.Stone like a shadow everywhere she goes with her lover what we are shown is the truer, uglier reality of her relationship with Paolo that she does not want to face. In letting herself be carried away by the romantic illusion she constantly denies that at the base of her relationship with Paolo there is just as much practicality as there is in the reason the homeless young man pursues her. His needs are much more immediate. He needs clothes because his own are completely ragged. He needs food because he has nothing to eat. Mrs. Stone repeatedly wines and dines her lover and takes him on fancy shopping sprees and yet she is in complete denial of the fact that these favors have been at least in part fueling their relationship. Until the very end she refused to see the truth and yet when Paolo finally departs her company for greener pastures she finally accepts the young man and comes face to face with the reality of what her relationship was really like at its core. The young man symbolizes the ugly side of her relationship that she constantly shelters herself from and refused to admit that it existed until I could be denied no longer.

bbboomer49-1 I don't know of what social class Rodrigo Santoros character had been before the war but I do know Mussolini did favor the aristocratic crowd prior to the war, causing the middle class Italian to increasingly fear and hate him. I do remember my grandmother talking about his breaking up the unions and doing everything to help the wealthy. Santoro did not need to speak, his expressions and his eyes spoke for him. I don't believe he was anyone to be feared. He was homeless and hungry and probably ill. This wealthy lady represented life and survival to him, but how was he to catch her eye when he had nothing at all to offer but himself? The night that she was standing outside the restaurant and jumped at him demanding to know what he wanted from her showed us she had nothing to fear from him. He backed away and appeared as if he was about to cry. When she finally threw him the keys his eyes filled with hope as if the gates of heaven had been open to him. I believe he went to her, not to harm her but with the hope of becoming a very devoted companion to her. That in their union he would survive and she would not be lonely anymore.

Anthony Youell It must have been an interesting film to attract such an array of comment which both support the film and criticises it. The interest for me lies not in the fact that it is of itself a good film or a bad film, nor in the fact that it is a remake of a Beatty/Leigh film. The interest lies in the fact that such a range of comments both approving and disapproving could be made about the performances of the actors, including Dennehy, with such vehemence. I must say that I do not find comments like; "He's hot! He gets to take his shirt off a lot" any more an objective comment about acting ability than Leigh was much better at acting 'the neurotic' than Mirren because that wasn't acting either, she really was that way! Williams often concentrates upon characters who are emotionally fractured or ragged: Kowolski in "... Streetcar ..." and Laura Wingfield in " ... Menagerie." Karen Stone is likewise emotionally frail. Cossetted by a rich husband for years and harbouring doubts about her acting talent, she is also physically unfulfilled. When her husband apologises to her for not fulfilling the physical role in their marriage, she retorts: "If I'd wanted to behave like an animal, I would have married an animal" but clearly she does want to behave like an animal as is evidenced by a string of marcetta that escort her in Rome. She is damaged goods, She is emotionally scarred and physically and emotionally vulnerable, a fact recognised by the Contessa, a vengeful, embittered, exploitative, parasitic harpy, whose business it is to know these things and arrange for a remedy. Ironically, Karen is anything but hardened like stone, whatever her name suggests. She embarks on a series of assignations culminating in Paolo, an arrogant aristocrat whose genius for story-telling rivals the Brothers Grimm. We cannot be sure he is even a Conte, when Karen attempts to phone him using the number on the gilt-edged card he has given her, the line rings strangely, but not unexpectedly, dead. Nor is Karen Stone unaware of what is going on. She remarks upon the series of young men that the Contessa has supplied, all of whom coincidentally had some friend in dire (fiscal) need. But she is content to be 'shook down' (to a degree) in order to have the attention of these attractive young men who could and would do with enthusiasm what her husband could not. I wanted to shake the woman, not for her stupidity because she wasn't stupid, but for her susceptibility and vulnerability. I wanted to say: "Act you age, woman, you're making a fool of yourself." Mirren's eyes flicker almost imperceptibly when Paolo changes his story about the six brigade members who were killed. First, they were killed "on the plains of Africa" but hours later they were killed "on the boat". He doesn't bat an eyelid, she does! But neither of them seem to care. He is so self-assured in his supposed aristocratic arrogance and she is so needy, the lie passes.Williams's preoccupations were generally local, or at least American. In this story, however, he has introduced a European/American theme and I wondered if Williams had not been recently reading some Henry James. Here we have the American ingenue confronted by the might and deviousness of the European sophistication and tradition. The Italians may be impoverished, they may be reduced to running scams and fixing up lonely ladies with gigolos, they may be living in penury and have to beg but they have the weight of the European tradition and culture to support them in adversity. So the age of Rome is mentioned at least twice, overstating its age by some hundreds of years, and Paolo draws attention to the oldest street in the city. Whether it is or not, it serves his purpose to say it is. But to Karen he says: "You are only fifty years old" which to her should be an unspoken criticism, and shocks her that he should say it aloud. But he is really saying: You Americans have no history compared to us", a sentiment espoused earlier by the Contessa who opines that any country with less than 400 years of history, has no tradition. We see in advance the pathetic contempt that the vanquished European has for the triumphant ( and sometimes triumphal) American. It is fully articulated in the last scene with the Contessa in a bitter attack born of frustration. Without assessing the relative moralities of Karen Stone or the Contessa or Paolo, it is the American who morally crumbles at the end, inviting an unwashed, unkempt, possibly very smelly young man (he's a bit too old to be an 'urchin') into her bedroom. Her degradation is complete. It doesn't require anyone to murder her. She is already destroyed. The Italians still have their culture, traditions, and history to fall back on.Much has been said of the acting of various characters so I don't want to comment on this other than to say that Olivier Martinez seems to have received special attention for being wooden. Having not seen him in anything else, it's hard to make a comprehensive statement about his acting but I thought he conveyed the stiffness and arrogance that one would expect of a 'titled' person. Others may disagree.