Customer Reviews

Days and Clouds

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

How closely is your job tied in with your very identity? Anyone who feels secure and deserving in their comfortable middle class lifestyle is bound to come unhinged when watching this powerful film...What happens when you lose your prestigious position and privileges and suddenly find yourself working class ? How much do our jobs and homes define who we are? If you lose that job, do you also lose your self-worth? Can you redefine yourself as working class, living where you never would have deigned to live before? Can you keep the same friends now that you can no longer afford to eat in the same restaurants?

In the current crisis, this film should resonate with everyone... How many of us are really secure, no matter what we do as professions? The acting is superb, the plot tight, and the characters resonate, as do the situations...

I love Italian movies and love Margarhita Buy as well. This movie is both inspiring and scary too. The realities of the world now are not those to be envied and admired. There is insecurity all around us with our employment and overall financial situation. I am fortunate to be currently employed, but this can change just as quickly as it did for Michele. Being in my late 40's is a tough time to be out looking for a job where much of my competition is with those in their 20's and 30's. I can totally understand the angst that Michele felt. I too, can understand the helplessness and anger that Elsa felt too. I can't imagine being told by a spouse that they have been out of work for 2 months and that everything in my world is now about to take a drastic move.

I highly recommend everyone see this wonderful movie !

Not one of the best Film Movement movies. It wanders around for a fairly long time trying to build the story, and then gradually draws you into Michele giving up on all the things he thought important. Before you know it, you're living Michele and Elsa's new life, not remembering the old one. Fairly abruptly the film ends with a very tender moment. At 6 minutes short of 2 hours, it is an investment to watch this film.

There is a feeling of that cinema verite from many years ago. A sense that the director had a good idea where things should go, what major events should happen, but let the charismatic Michele and Elsa be themselves. The film delivers a wonderful view into Italian culture. Not the one Americans know from Italian immigrants or touring through Italy. More of how the Italian man has a complicated but comfortable life. He is expected to be the sole provider, and allowed to do exactly as he pleases. In many ways, his wife is like his mother. This film turns that cultural icon on it's side. And the subject of the film is this couple's path to resolution.

This was shot entirely in Genoa, Italy. Over the past two years I travelled to Genoa around a dozen times. I spent a week at a time actually working with an Italian consluting company, gaining a bit more insight into the Italian male and female. This film shows a lot of what I saw during those many weeks. The only strange part of this film, there are some very pretty areas in Genoa, they chose not to film there. The views are mostly of the port and an almost suburban area. The views of the Mediteranean are beautiful. But this is a much more bleak film. One aspect of Genoa perfectly captured - the city is almost all asphalt and concrete buildings. There is virtually no greenery anywhere, since almost every square meter of this city has buildings or streets.

Technically this is a standard melodrama. There is nothing particularly creative about the camera angles, framing, editing, or lighting. It is shot in a very straight simple manner. That is some of the charm of this film, it feels a bit like cinema verite (without the bouncy handheld camera and grainy film stock). In Italian with English subtitles.

The film would definately receive and R rating for language, the f bomb was translated a pretty large number of times. Aside from that language issue this is really a PG-13 film. There is no nudity, no violence (unless you count Michele slapping his adult daughter Alice), and one very short moment of sensuality completely under the covers. There is really very little R rated about this film.

Film Movements is such an incredible film series. This is a good film. It's well worth viewing if you love independent and foreign film. The two lead characters are pleasant to look at, not beautiful, but pleasant all the same. The Italian is wonderful to follow along with the subtitles.

lacks the bit of humor the viewer needs to get through it. prefered The Grocer's Son or Ginger and Cinnamon if you like Film Movement stuff that's similar.

Times are tough right now, mirroring the era of The Great Depression. Financial security is a ghost, friendships and relationships are tested by walking the razor edge of insolvency, and according to the 'popular movie' polls the escape for many is in the darkened movie houses with comic hero or animal animated mindless safety net entertainment. Not so with the very brilliant film DAYS AND CLOUDS written (with Doriana Leondeff, Francesco Piccolo, and Federica Pontremoli) and directed with immaculate attention to detail by Silvio Soldini (BREAD AND TULIPS, etc). Soldini recreates the global financial nightmare in the form of an examination of one family's fracture and consequences. It resonates despite the depressing story, offering a glimpse into the universal ties that bind us at this moment.

Elsa (Margherita Buy) is graduating from Art History and Restoration school and seems to be a woman on top of her league, complete with surprise gifts and a celebration staged by her husband Michele (Antonio Albanese). Waking up the morning after her congratulations party, Elsa is ill with a hangover, but even more shocked when Michele breaks the news to her that he has been out of work for two months, ashamed that he has lost his company and his job, hiding in the couple's boat during the day. There is no money left and the couple must face losing their home and are forced to take on menial tasks to survive. Pride prevents the couple from sharing their financial downfall with friends and with their one child - Alice (Alba Rohrwacher) who has elected not to pursue education in favor of waiting tables in a restaurant she has invested in with friends. The tension of keeping the secret to themselves causes mounting friction between the couple and events that would have never happened had they shared their misfortune with friends and family bring their relationship to a near fatal end. How they survive is touched, quietly and quickly and gently, at film's end.

Soldini spares no pain in the responses of his characters' misfortune, but at the same time he allows each character to emerge from ideal married tropes to completely human victims of financial ruin. Buy and Albanese are triumphant in their performances as the married couple caught in the crumble of decline. But there are fine performances by Rohrwacher and Fabio Troiano as her lover Riki, and Carla Signoris as Elsa's closest friend Nadia, and actors playing two ex-employees of Michele who provide a window of friendship in Michele's time of desperate need.

The cinematography by Ramiro Cirita and the musical score blending opera and folk music by Giovanni Venosta enhance the motion of the film that though just under two hours in length, appears more succinct. Silvio Soldini has taken a topic that affects us all and polished into a film that is bound to touch every viewer deeply. Highly recommended movie from The Film Movement. Grady Harp, February 09

Most of the days in this domestic drama are cloudy indeed. Elsa has just finished her art history degree as her mid-life project. Her husband Michele threw her a party, then afterwards broke the news that, in fact, he hadn't worked in two months because he was fired. All the feathers hit the fan. They must sell their house and boat, take jobs far beneath their station in life, battle emotions of fear and (for Michele) self-hatred, negotiate issues of friends and family, and decide whether to choose fight or flight. Days and Clouds won fifteen awards in the Italian equivalent of the Oscars, but I thought it dragged along rather predictably for too long (115 minutes) and then concluded rather blandly. Still, even though the story is cliched, it's certainly not a cliche for people who experience what they do, and in this sense the film delivers deep emotions. In Italian with English sub-titles.

Yikes, almost two hours of what has been in the news constantly for a long time now. Yes, many families are unraveling from job loss and other factors. This film just didn't do anything for me; I didn't connect with the characters at all, not because I couldn't empathize, but I just didn't like them enough to care. I thought it would get better, but it didn't.

This realistic relationship drama with exceptional performances from all of the cast members (Antonio Albanese, Margherita Buy, Alba Rohrwacher) follows a well-to-do Italian couple breaking apart when Michele loses his job while his wife Elsa has finally achieved her dream of studying art history. Elsa finds the courage to tackle the difficulties, but Michele is closer to giving up. The economic decline is not just a term in this (and many other real-life) household - it leads to self-respect crisis, increasing social distance from the wealthier friends and puts on a surface the weaknesses of everyone involved.
After all, the message is that you can still find the strength in yourself and the ones you love. A very well-done, thought-provoking film.

`Giorni e Nuvole' is a film that I had to witness twice in order to fully embrace. I was initially struck by the films poignancy, especially in this world's economic state, but I must say that it wasn't until the beautiful ending that I was wholly moved to experience the film once more, under a different light. As some have noted, the film seems to move rather slowly in parts, and that was my main concern initially. I will say that the second time through it moved along far better for I had a different outlook. It also allowed me to fully engage myself in this story and weed out moments and motives I wouldn't have noted the first time through.

Upon reflection it is easy to see that this film is about so much more that unemployment.

For me, this film deals with the stigma put on prominence and wealth. The couple that is focused on here, Elsa and Michele, are a wealthy couple who enjoy the pleasures of life. They like to travel, they own a boat, they engage in activities that suit their expensive palate. Elsa herself is engaged in restoration activities that pay her nothing but give her a feeling of self worth and self appreciation. They show an apparent loftiness of spirit, even if it is subtle, in their regard for their daughter Alice and her `low' standards with men and work. Their world is tossed upside down when Michele loses his job and they have to limit themselves financially, risking losing everything. Their relationship starts to fray, and while it is apparent that they have had issues in the past (Michele had an affair) it is the issue of money that has disbanded them completely. Even Elsa makes a comment that she would have rather he been cheating again than have lost his job. Money has defined their life and now they didn't have any.

The glimmer of hope that shines itself over the films ending (maybe they aren't as materialistic as they have appeared) was a major turning point for me, and one that I truly respect. It layered on ray of light without beating us over with sentiment. It allowed us to soak in all the horrible things they said and did as a result of their `predicament' but also allowed us to see that, while they are human and imperfect at that, they are not `bad' people. They commit bad actions because of their emotional state, but those actions do not define them, and it isn't until that moment that we truly see them for who they are.

The acting here is phenomenal. Margherita Buy and Antonio Albanese really understand the strain that their characters are under, and they approach each scene with a hesitant, almost distilled sense of humiliation. They are ashamed and so they have to pretend not to be.

For me, this film really gets under the skin of a nation at the moment. With the economy plummeting, the world is going to be a very different place for many people very soon, and this film helps illuminate an issue I don't think many people give much thought. The situation that Elsa and Michele find themselves is not uncommon for many people today. Unemployment and poverty is not a new or a rare thing. What makes this case so significant and so detrimental is that it is happening to a couple who is far from used to having to be conservative. It becomes so much harder and more devastating because they can't emotionally handle it. When they handle stress by eating at a nice restaurant, how can they handle their newfound stress of NOT BEING ABLE TO AFFORD EATING OUT? While one may look at their state and claim it a petty complaint, for there are people in far less desirable situations, one must understand the truth in the phrase `the bigger they are the harder they fall'. This is also why the ending is so poignant for is shows the frivolousness in their self destructive actions but it also shows that all one needs in time of crisis is a proper set of priorities!

The film is slow from start to finish. It is completely predictable, depressing and what's the moral of the story again ?