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Malena
Miramax Films


9.3

based on 22 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 30 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence

Starring Monica Bellucci, Daniele Arena, Giovanni Litrico, and Giuseppe Sulfaro

Malena (Bellacci), a beautiful young war widow, inspires the sensual awakenings of a group of adolescent boys in 1941 Sicily.

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Giuseppe Tornatore Luciano Vincenzoni (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Giuseppe Tornatore
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 10, 2001 Video: July 10, 2001 Theatrical: December 25, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Italy
LANGUAGE(S):	Italian (with English subtitles)

Received two 2001 Oscar nominations, including Best Cinematography. Also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Malena the film is as beautiful and seductive as its heroine, with its ravishing Lajos Koltai cinematography and sweepingly romantic Ennio Morricone score.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Nothing new here except model-turned-actress Bellucci. To call her noteworthy would be an understatement.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

A nostalgic coming-of-age sex comedy tastefully lecherous enough to indicate that its intended demographic is several decades past puberty.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

What begins as a blushing, priapic opera buffa about coming of age turns into a verismo shocker, before softening into something mellower.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

It differs from American films about the period in its evocation of day-to-day passion. The power of beauty is often dealt with in films, but not so often its powerful curse.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

You wish that Malena's inner life had been given as much accent as her outer charms.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Intriguing, containing a truthful kernel of sweetness, rot and brutality that will shock many.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Striking photography, period detail, screen-filling crowd scenes, and veteran composer Morricone's score make this one worth seeing, but the sheer nastiness of the town's people drags it down.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Too often seems like a slightly silly film.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

No period of Italian history has produced more great movies than the WWII years . But, Malena romanticizes and even sentimentalizes those years.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If Mussolini had a Monica Bellucci to inspire his troops, we might still be trying to take Palermo.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There is noting quite so awkward as a film that is one thing while it pretends to be another.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

When the film changes gears from light coming-of-age comedy to ex-post-facto war parable midway through, it loses its focus and suddenly becomes a much darker beast.

Variety David Rooney

Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance.

USA Today Mike Clark

There's definitely some paradiso in watching Malena walking, but not enough to sustain almost two hours of cinema.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Somewhere in writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore's overstyled movie, about a 12-year-old boy (Sulfaro) during the Italian fascist period who has the hots for a mistreated war widow (Belluci), is a pretty good short story about the fickleness of community and the cruelty of gossip struggling to get out.

Time Richard Schickel

Things finally work out all right--except for audiences, who will find this thin movie bereft of the more richly textured sentiments of Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso."

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Giuseppe Tornatore has long been a master of cheap sentiment ("Cinema Paradiso," " The Legend of 1900"), but his latest film is his most shallow, reprehensible exercise in nostalgia to date.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Feels more like "Porky's" with marinara sauce than "Summer of '42."

Film.com Henry Cabot Beck

In the end, Malena is an unlikable and foul farce, unworthy of Tornatore's previously gentle touch.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chris S. gave it a9:
What a great movie. Excellent performances with a spectacular score and striking images. You won't forget this one.

W. Christopher H. gave it a4:
In the past I have greatly admired Tornatore movies, but this one is just not worth the time. It's almost as if he watched Fellini's "Amarcord," decided to focus entirely on the character "La Gradisca" from that movie, also included the obsessive attention to pre-teen auto-eroticism, and then turned it all into some sort of cruel neo-realist "critique." It's got all the cruel intensity of a Giovanni Verga novel near the end, which is very Sicilian, but completely misplaced. It's rather disgusting, in fact. Tornatore was already going downhill at "The Star Maker," but this takes the cake.

Halla A. gave it a 10:
I loved it. very beautifully portrayed at how sometimes beauty isn't exactly always a blessing.

Willy Billy gave it a 10:
The Best Lovley Musical Beauty File that i saw yet ... What a greate object ;)

Christophe C. gave it a 10:
The most beautiful story I've ever seen.

Ali H. gave it a 10:
Outstanding movie.

Lorenzo V. gave it a 10:
A brilliant cinematic triumph! A film whose intent is to evoke nostalgia succeeds in every level. I was galvanized emotionally, psychologically, and visially by the story and its characters. A must see.

Malena Miramax Films

Malena
Miramax Films