★★★★ Facing Windows

[Tiny: 4.0]

Tiny: This is a very nice Italian film (La Finestra di Fronte) set in Rome mostly in the present with some parts in 1943. The story is about some rather common themes and set-ups, I suppose: a stranger enters into someone's tiresome life and improves that person's life, and maybe the stranger learns something about himself in the process. (Boy, Julie Andrews has nailed this in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins). (Aside: this movie is not a musical.) That set-up is played out here through the life of a not-that-happily married woman (a rather appealing one) whose husband takes in an elderly stranger. The stranger has a mysterious past and memory difficulties. The woman has a secret crush of sorts on her next door neighbor (my wife says he is a rather appealing one), and soon they are working together to help the stranger. There are some interesting plot developments. While the story held my interest almost all the way through, I was not entirely enthralled the entire time, and that is probably the only thing holding this movie back from a 4.5 or even 5.0. Every other aspect of the film is off-the-charts outstanding. Almost every shot is stunning; there is something about the sheer quality of the photography in this movie that blew me away. The director (or maybe cinematographer) has a real gift for focusing on certain elements within a frame or racking focus. Colors are intense at times, completely subdued at others, and, well, I'll stop, but this is a very good looking movie. Not surprisingly given the title of the movie, there are some great uses of doors and windows, and some very good dream-like sequences.