Customer Reviews

Shelter Me

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

 

 

This is a small Italian Independent film that has so much potential, but about one third of the way in, doesn't deliver.

The opening segments are creative, there is an interplay between a handheld, or home movie, and the actual film eye. The editing, camera work and all are done extremely well. Intrigue gets built with Anna discovering a young man, Anis, stowed away in their car. Ana and Mara have unknowingly brought in an illegal alien from Morroco to Italy. The story and filming continue down a creative style by slowly getting to know Anis. There's a mystery about the two women, this young man, and where will the story lead. The director does an excellent job with camera angles, editing, sound to keep us just barely understanding what is happening.

Sadly when the film reaches about one third in, the camera work, editing and story telling falls into standard melodrama. We're presented with the same old camera work as most movies. The story line denegrates into the standard love triangle. And frankly, I have yet to understand exactly what the complete chaos at the end was supposed to mean, or how it related to what the director was trying to accomplish.

In a nutshell, this film is a love triangle, it happens to be two women together with a man entering the scene. But it is still a standard love triangle movie. And yes the movie ends completely unresolved, but it isn't too hard to imagine, Anis will be caught and put in jail. And the two women will separate. Those are very logical conclusions to this film.

I give this 2 stars for the creative begining work. There are some pretty views of mountains in Italy. The Italian is beautiful. And the two women are alluring. It's just not a ground breaking film, nor particularly compelling story telling.

This is definately an R rated film. There is some nudity. And the translators chose to use the F word a few times. It's also likely, not a topic younger viewers would necessarily enjoy. And it is in Italian with subtitles, no English track is available.

Wolfe releases are usually either spectacularly good or not so good, nothing in between. This sadly falls in the not so good category.

The DVD includes an interview with the director.