CORRECTION: This comment DOES contain spoilers
The direction of Fiorella Infascelli's Il vestito da sposa (The Wedding Dress) has some original touches and it's a good cast, but they're undercut by poor pacing and a weak ending. Il vestito da sposa is the story of a woman who calls off her wedding because she's just been raped, and then unknowingly falls in love with one of the rapists -- who happens to have designed and made her wedding dress. He then gets run over by a bus just at the moment when she discovers the truth about him. It's an unusual theme, with too easy and convenient a resolution. What's interesting is to watch the laser-sharp energy of Maya Sansa as the bride; the beautiful and much-in-demand young actress makes the character's sudden changes of mood totally convincing; and likewise worth watching is Salvatore Lazzaro as Andrea the dressmaker/rapist/suitor, who's compelling creepy and not a simple villain by any means. Lazzaro makes Andrea's ambiguous nature believable, but Andrea turns out to be too complex a character for this meandering, low-energy film to develop, and the situation has nowhere to go: hence the fake resolution of the cop-out ending.
Shown at the NICE (New Italian Cinema Event) festival in San Francisco in November 2004.
The direction of Fiorella Infascelli's Il vestito da sposa (The Wedding Dress) has some original touches and it's a good cast, but they're undercut by poor pacing and a weak ending. Il vestito da sposa is the story of a woman who calls off her wedding because she's just been raped, and then unknowingly falls in love with one of the rapists -- who happens to have designed and made her wedding dress. He then gets run over by a bus just at the moment when she discovers the truth about him. It's an unusual theme, with too easy and convenient a resolution. What's interesting is to watch the laser-sharp energy of Maya Sansa as the bride; the beautiful and much-in-demand young actress makes the character's sudden changes of mood totally convincing; and likewise worth watching is Salvatore Lazzaro as Andrea the dressmaker/rapist/suitor, who's compelling creepy and not a simple villain by any means. Lazzaro makes Andrea's ambiguous nature believable, but Andrea turns out to be too complex a character for this meandering, low-energy film to develop, and the situation has nowhere to go: hence the fake resolution of the cop-out ending.
Shown at the NICE (New Italian Cinema Event) festival in San Francisco in November 2004.