Customer Reviews

The Missing Star ( L'Étoile imaginaire ) ( La Stella che non c'č ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Italy ]

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This film won many awards in Europe and has been shown at film festivals here in the US. I saw it as part of the Italian students' IISA series at Berkeley.

I found this film to be extraordinary in its message. The subject is one that is happening in many countries, but not addressed in anything I have seen--that is the sale and disassembly of manufacturing businesses to China. The film opens with demonstrations by Italian workers over yet another plant closing, this time a steel mill. Workers are angry and shouting, protesting their shared descent into unemployment.

Actor Sergio Castellito (who I first saw in "Mostly Martha"--if you haven't seen that, it's also good), plays Vincenzo Buonavolanta, a maintenance worker who becomes deeply committed to taking a reworked part to the plant's new owners. To do that, he travels into the New China, and we see it in the background as the story unfolds, as an awe-inspiring look at the heights and the depths of China's burgeoning new prosperity.

The film is wonderfully acted, the score is beautiful, and the scenes unforgettable. Sergio Castellitto plays his character with an heroic quality, and, to add to the story, of course, there is a romance between Vincenzo and a lovely Chinese translator who comes to his aid.

I learned so much from this movie about what I don't know. I didn't know that exportation of obsolete manufacturing is an ongoing phenomenon in the world, and that, as a process, it's probably not so bad. But it's the scale that the mercenary effects of corporate expansion and greed have on world cultures, and how that affects all of us, whether we know it, or are blissfully unaware.

I dare for this film to be shown in this country. It's an incendiary topic and my first thought was that this would never be shown here because it appears to question the relentless expansion of capitalism. But I think its comment is larger than that. What are we all after in this world, anyway? Do we want a decent life? And what does that mean? Clean water, clean places to live, a job?

Director Gianni Amelio has made other films, but this one is a star like none other.