Appassionate (1999) User Reviews

An interesting and creative attempt at cinema that falls a bit flat

[toclement · 5/10 · 6 December 2000]

This was sort of a cross between a film and a musical. The story loosely follows a group of interconnected people (both in the past and the present) and their trials and tribulations in dealing with some traditional cinematic subjects such as love, friendship, family relations, and jealousy. Though the music scenes were often quite effective and the music itself was generally very good, the constantness of the music detracted from the film. It seemed that every time a scene was building up to something substantial, it was cut off and suddenly a music video appeared to punctuate the scene. This was fine once in a while, but the overuse of this technique caused the film to lose its coherence. Another thing that I'm not sure if it bothered me or not was that many of the scenes filmed in Napoli neighborhoods seemed to have large groups of bystanders and onlookers in the background who kept looking at the camera; this was a bit distracting. In sum, I did enjoy the movie on some levels, but as a whole I'd have to say I was unsatisfied and a recommendation is really a toss-up. 5 out of 10.