Stephanie Sandrelly and Harvey Keitel – La sposa americana Good cinema is the kind of thing that makes it possible to clear phenomena of their factuality. It carries within it an eidetic construct that reveals the phenomena of inner experience. We get acquainted with the perception of people, visual constructions, history, mores. Even a simple image successfully executed by an actor can tell more about the era than any memoir. For me, one of the heights of acting was the brilliant hit in the image of Judas by Harvey Keitel in the famous scandalous film Scorsese. Good in her empty disgust was Stephanie Sandrelly in The Conformist. Much could be expected from their duo, especially since in his “European” period of his career Keitel managed to star in a number of very high-quality films.
I have to tell you what a bad movie is. This is the kind of cinema that is “attached” to superficial, pressing, deceptively meaningful issues. These films include "American Wife".
This is a simple and uncomplicated story about the lives of not young people, betrayal and friendship. This happens when spouses in marriage do not occupy such positions as is considered acceptable. It happens that they cheat, find close partners among friends. It also happens that two couples get so close that questions of love and sex between some of them are no longer taboo. There can be two new pairs and tragic triangles. Do you need to explain everything?
I agree, because the same question should be addressed to the filmmakers, who highlighted the “little things of life”, instead of paying attention to deeper issues. Sex and passion last for seconds and appear as commonplace. Marriage is similarly commonplace. It’s no wonder that when death comes up all of a sudden, it’s all a little more alive. The thing is that the concept chosen by the creators of the tape is destructive in its structure.
The filmmakers do their best to drown out the dynamics of the narrative and the potential of the actors (no need for additional advertising). Boredom here means nothing but boredom. For such a film, you need fortitude - to watch to the end and experience, so as not to be surprised by an unattractive ending. Translated into the language of painting, this is not even a portrait, and does not carry any intellectual “stuffing” still life. Two couples, sex, infidelity, self-confident bourgeois - more here and nothing to remember.
1 out of 10