La vita che vorrei (2004) User Reviews

Life Imitating Art in Two Parallel Romances

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 6 September 2010]

In Rome, the aspirant actress Laura (Sandra Ceccarelli) is invited for the audition of the film "La Vita Che Vorrei" by the director Luca (Ninni Bruschetta). Laura is the lover of Raffaele (Fabio Camilli), a man with good circulation in the cinema industry, and has a good performance reading the dialogs in the screenplay with the successful actor Stefano (Luigi Lo Cascio). The extrovert Laura and the self- controlled Stefano are cast in the lead roles in the epic and they have a love affair along the filmmaking. However, their relationship has ups and downs with the jealousy and egocentrism of Stefano in a parallel with the characters of the movie.

"La Vita Che Vorrei" is a pleasant film about life imitating art in two parallel romances. The situations and dialogs are entwined between "real life" and cinema and sometime the viewer believe that it is part of the film but it is their private lives and vice-versa. This is the first time that I see Sandra Ceccarelli and this actress is so beautiful that could be the personification of the definition of a "pretty woman". Her performance is intense and I was really impressed with her beauty. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Vida Que Eu Sonhei" ("The Life That I Have Dreamt")

The life I want

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 29 November 2008]

Sometimes real life and what is depicted in movies, or plays, have a way to get mixed up. This is the case with this story in which actors audition for a film that will mark them for life. When Stefano, the principal actor in a movie in preproduction, is asked to read opposite an inexperienced actress. Something happens from the moment they are seated next to each other that changes their lives. Stefano, who is obviously more experienced, feels the attraction for Laura, that is finally chosen by the director to appear in the main role.

This film within a film technique has been done before. What is really interesting is that what started as a casting problem, evolves into a real romance by the leading stars. In the film, they are supposed to be characters in a period film that evokes a take on "Camille". Laura who plays Eleonora, is the mistress of a powerful nobleman. Stefano, plays Federico, the man who falls for Eleonora, a woman of a different social status, and viewed by the society types as a vulgar interloper imposed by the Count.

Laura gets much more than what she bargained for. Jealousy, and ego play a good part in the way Stefano reacts when his co-star is seen being courted to appear in another film. Eventually, Laura feels she must get away from Stefano to be on her own, carrying a deep secret no one knows about.

Giuseppe Piccione, the director, and co-writer, makes a good impression with this love story that pits the lovers to make decisions they will ultimately regret. The talented Luigi LoCascio is seen as Stefano, the actor who is blown by the inexperienced woman that gets to be his lover. Sandra Ceccarelli, on the other hand, is marvelous as the aspiring actress. Mr. LoCascio, who is first seen with a beard, looks different from other films he has been in recently. This was a bit disconcerting since he appears to be someone else.

Cecarelli's Face

[davidtraversa-1 · 8/10 · 14 December 2007]

I agree with the other comments in everything. I didn't know the actress Sandra Cecarelli, I was mesmerized by her face, what a Face! What a cinematic presence! She burns a hole on the screen every time she appears! she could have been another Garbo in 1930's Hollywood, or another Ingrid Bergman or another Melina Mercury.

Her voice, also lovely and whispery -sort of Ava Gardner's voice-, reminded me of Laura Antonelli's ultra feminine voice in that incredible masterpiece: "L'Innocente" (1976) by Lucchino Visconti and as a matter of fact, I was thinking about that movie while watching this one, since the film they are shooting within this film, takes place during the same historical period. Could it be that Giuseppe Piccioni (the Director) was influenced by Visconti? The way they blend both stories, the contemporary and the historical - film within the film- is masterful.

Most of the film is totally absorbing, yet, I couldn't explain why I lost interest in it after her pregnancy. It bogs down from then on. Fascinating study of jealousy and machismo. Woman, as usual, the victim. Fascinating also because one will never know (as in My Cousin Rachel) if she is innocent or evil.

We know that her last-second invitation to him to rejoin them (Her and the newborn baby) when leaving the hospital, was the biggest mistake she could've ever committed for her own sake -and why not, maybe the baby's too.

He will never change; at least he was honest enough clarifying this point to her: "I didn't change, but I improved a little". Actors should never fall in love with actors, especially when they are jealous!! Excellent director, excellent cast, excellent music, excellent everything!!

Very instructive

[Chris Knipp · 7/10 · 16 April 2006]

This thought-provoking, informative movie about romance, acting, and film-making seems not to have traveled well, despite awards and nominations. It got some award nominations in Italy and a significant nomination in Berlin and the two actors, Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli, who've appeared together frequently before, have their fans—but also their enemies. "Lento noioso e pesante" a viewer posted on the Italian movie site FilmUp—slow, boring, and heavy. It is that, at times, and at times gave me the feeling that I was either on drugs or having a very bad dream. It's so incestuously self-referential and claustrophobic it's chilling—and numbing; but it's also a master class on what a scary convoluted experience it would be to have an affair with another actor while making a movie in which the two of you are having an affair—in costume, in another century. What is real? Before the two shoot the last scene of the story based on La Traviata in which the girlfriend is dying and the rejected lover weeps over her deathbed, the actress has just told the actor that she is through with him and never wants to see him again. The writers and director take a very Italian and sentimental way out of this sad finale with a cute, upbeat coda, but the actor, Lo Cascio's character, who has told the actress earlier that he scorns actors who"really" cry in crying scenes, obviously is weeping "real" tears in the deathbed scene. The character, the modern day actor, that is, is constantly getting phone calls from an "admirer" who tells him his acting is worthless. And on FilmUp, sure enough, Lo Cascio himself gets comments about how talentless he is.

In fact, Lo Cascio and Ceccarelli perform acting gymnastics in this movie that will knock your eyes out and the beautiful and expressive Ceccarelli was nominated for the 2005 European Film Academy Best Actress Award for this performance. And yet, the movie is so obsessive that it can bore you to tears at times too, and what may doom it aside from its meta-linguistic focus on an art form is that basically it's a chick flick, a Cosmo tale about a sensitive and naive woman at the whim of a worldly, self-centered man. I can see why Jennifer and Brad broke up, after this. Not somehow a movie that makes your heart sing, but need-to-know information for any film buff.

Showing at the SFIFF 2006 four times at two venues, this would be a worthwhile choice for anyone who likes fairly serious mainstream European films that may not ever be showing in US theaters. And it should appeal to anyone who wants a look at the glamor and stress of film-making from an Italian perspective.

A film inside a film

[michelerealini · 8/10 · 24 October 2004]

For "la vita che vorrei" we have the same team of "Luce dei miei occhi": director Giuseppe Piccioni and actors Luigi Lo Cascio and Sandra Ceccarelli. Lo Cascio and Ceccarelli play two actors in this film!; the two meet during a shooting and start a romance. It is a film inside a film, because the scenes they're making for their movie coincidentally reflect the relationship they have in "real" life. Their job and the situations they're playing are a mirror of their private life...

I think Piccioni chooses an original way of telling a love story, not a classical way of doing a love film! The film is a continuous game between what actors express during their job and their social life. Piccioni shows us how a relationship goes on, without prejudices and without "honey".

That's original, the film talks about cinema as well... We can say that "La vita che vorrei" reminds us of François Truffaut's "La nuit américaine". Bravo Piccioni, bravo Lo Cascio & Ceccarelli!