Between Strangers (2002)

Olivia is an artist, but recurring dreams pull her toward the daughter she was forced to give up as a young girl, bringing urgency to her work. Natalia has just commanded her first magazine cover as a photojournalist, but an aching to know what happened to the subject of her cover leads her on a new direction in life. Catherine, despite being an accomplished cellist, is consumed with lingering emotional pain. She is wavering unsteadily as she disappears from her family, exacting revenge on the source of her anxiety. As the three women each are visited by the same vision of a young girl, they become inspired to pursue their dreams with a renewed spirit of hope and freedom.

Solid film

Between Strangers is the sort of film that never gets made in America- not in Hollywood big budget films nor in independent films, because it is a film that takes its own sweet time in conveying its ideas to the viewer. That's not to say that it's a great film, nor even a pretty good one, but watching this 2003 Canadian-Italian film on DVD, shot in Toronto, gives a viewer an insight into how other people enjoy the same basic forms of art.
This film follows the lives of three different women, each of whom has issues surrounding a trauma involving a little girl, and their own troubles relating to the men in their lives. That the film makes heavy-handed usage of a little girl (Sydney Pearson) that appears to each of them once, as a symbol, is a flaw, since there was no need for symbolism in an otherwise realistic film. The cast is loaded with international film heavyweights, not the least of whom is Sophia Loren, whose son Edoardo Ponti (whose father is Carlo Ponti), in his first time at a film's helm, wrote and directed this film. She plays Olivia, a woman who works in a Toronto supermarket, and years earlier married an ex-athlete, now wheelchair bound invalid, John, played by Pete Postlethwaite, a man whose rage at the world is directed like a laser at his masochistic wife. Her secret is that she had a daughter out of wedlock, as a teenager, and was forced to give her up for adoption by her father. Now, the daughter (Wendy Crewson) is a famed sculptress, whose fame seems to coincide with Olivia's own rediscovery of her drawing talent, unused since her pregnancy, of works of art eerily similar to her daughter's, and encouraged by Max (Gerald Depardieu), her gardener friend at a local park. The second woman lead is Natalia Bauer, a photojournalist played by Mira Sorvino, whose photos from the war in Angola have landed her a cover of Time magazine, much to the delight of her father, Alexander (Klaus Maria Brandauer), himself a legendary photojournalist, who both encourages and discourages her passive-aggressively. Yet, she is guilt-ridden by the girl in her photo, because she could have saved the child's life, rather than gotten the photo. The third woman is Catherine (Debra Unger), a famed cellist who is stalking her ex-convict father, Alan Baxter (Malcolm McDowell), after he is released from prison after twenty-two years. She blames him for her mother's death, and this crisis has made her leave her marriage and daughter, who leaves plaintive messages on her answering machine.
That's the set up. Little overtly occurs in the film.... Sophia Loren gives a magnificent performance in what is reputedly the hundredth film of her career. Those who have chided her as building a career on her sexuality have never seen this woman's eyes. She is one of those rarities who acts with every square inch of her body. Postlethwaite, as her husband, is also very good, and it should not surprise that the best story in the film is the one the filmmaker accorded his mother.
Yet, I felt, to a degree, as if I were watching a slightly better than average telefilm from the 1970s, at times, but one that never quite gels into something first rate nor substantial. This is the screenplay's fault, and thus the burden lies with Ponti. It is one of those rare works of art that doesn't terribly move you, but you are better for having seen it, even though it will not haunt you. If that seems like a very mixed reaction, then I have succeeded in recapitulating my experience in watching it, and- for reasons that elude me, and despite all its flaws, I think you should watch it, too.
September 8, 2008

Celebrate woman, don't burn the bra

My admiration of Sophia Loren borders on idolatry. Though she will not go down in history as one of our great actresses she was not bad in the movie.
Eduardo Ponti made this movie with his mother in it and it is decisively a success. I loved the subtle play of relationships and experiences that are all too familiar to us. It is a lovely gentle movie in which the characters remains true to themselves and the story line is soft. I appreciate that the movie goer's intellect are not doubted by spelling/blaring/yelling out the plot or clues. We are trusted to pick them up ourselves and interpret them as we wish.
This movie is a true celebration of woman without needing to burn the bra. May 15, 2007

Sophia Loren in "Between Strangers"

I found this to be a very experimental and unusual
concept for a drama. It's always a visual treat to see a
fine performance from Sophia Loren. Her dramatic range
has expanded in her later years, lending pathos to a film
which features frankly depressing subject matter. While
the three protagonists escape their circumstantial and
unfulfilled lives rooted in unhappy relationships with their
fathers or spouses, that escape doesn't occur until the
very very end of the drama, painting the experience in very
gloomy colors. The concept of the three parallel lives is an
interesting one and I wondered throughout if the director,
Edoardo Ponti might be the now adult son of Sophia Loren.
I'm sure he's some relationship to Carlo Ponti. I enjoyed
Between Strangers, but it wasn't thrilling. October 5, 2005

Three Women, Sins and Forgiveness: Familiar But Well-Acted

Set in modern-day's Toronto, 'Between Strangers' follows the lives of three women loosely connected to each other, played by Sophia Loren, Mira Sorvino, and Deborah Kara Unger. The film's director Edoardo Ponti is the son of Ms. Loren.

Mira Sorvino is a successful journalist Natalia, whose recent photo shot in Angora is nationally praised, and was even used for the cover of Time maganize. But Natalia is still tormented by the sense of guilt, for she thinks she could have done something to the little girl instead of taking photos, even though she was in the war.

Deborah Kara Unger is renowned cellist Catherine, who has run away from her husband and daughter, and keeping herself aloof from others, she is thinking about plans that have something to do with one aged male (Malcolm McDowell) who has just come out of the jail. And Catherine is holding a loaded gun.

And Sophia Loren is a timid housewife Olivia, who works at a grocery store, and is married to John, a grim-faced man in wheelchair (Pete Postleswaite). One day, as you and her friend Max (Gerald Depardieu) will find in the nearby park, Olivia has been seeing in her dreams the dark figures coming out of rocks, and is drawing the pictures of them on paper. Later, as you know, we come to realize the real meaning of them.

The three stories are interwoven deftly, and the characters including the supporting ones are memorable. The acting is unanimously good, but the most impressive is naturally Sophia Loren, who has literally become an ordinary wife. Olivia has buried her own dream in the past, decided to live a stiflingly dismal life with her husband, and is still aware that her life is lacking something vital, and as the other two women do, she finally finds what to do in the end.

Sadly, however, the ingredients themselves in this film -- like journalist's ethics, troubled relations with father, or anything else -- are all nothing new to me, and though the script about sins and forgiveness is well-crafted, and eveything goes smooth and fits in the right place, I for one needed something more, something unique.

Maybe I have complaints about the film because I have seen films like 'Short Cuts' or 'Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.' But Sophia Loren is another story, and her acting alone can make this film worth your money and time. July 12, 2005

Fate's intersections!

Three stories leaded by women. Three solvent actresses will make the best she can to solve her ethical and problems. Three different occupations: the devoted wife and her invalid husband, the winner photographer of the year and a cellist who faces a brutal drama familiar will fight against her fears, disappointments and disillusions with conviction, honesty following her respective bliss.

It's remarkable to underline the smart device of the phantom girl who appears in dramatic moments was used previously by Kieslowski in his masterwork: Decalogue.
Another important issue: the attack to the old man: Malcom Mc Dowell works out a incisive destiny irony due precisely Mac Dowell thirty three years before in the Clockwork Orange plays a similar role but from the other side of the street when he makes the same against an indigent in the park with his fellow friends.

The presence of Klaus Maria Bandauer and Gerard Depardieu add this artwork film another quality seal . Mira Sorvino makes a convincing role as the winner who suddenly realizes the slender difference between duty and ethic. Loren displays all her experience in a devastating revelation

Touching direction. A mature film!
February 13, 2005

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