Susan Granger’s review of “Days and Clouds” (Film Movement)
Back in 2000, Silvio Soldini struck an emotional chord with “Bread and Tulips.” Now he’s back with a middle-aged, upper middle-class Genovese couple caught in the throes of life crisis precipitated by a financial upheaval.
When Elsa (Margherita Buy) receives her doctorate as an art historian, her proud husband Michele (Antonio Albanese) gives her lovely antique earrings and invites all their friends to a lavish surprise party. But the next morning, he’s forced to reveal the truth that he’s been hiding for the past two months: he’s been pushed out of the company he founded and is now jobless. They’re going to have to downsize: cancel their vacation abroad, dismiss their maid, put their spacious apartment on the market, sell their boat and cut expenses.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Elsa wails. “I hate not knowing things.”
In the following months, as they work their way through embarrassment, frustration and shame, their basic marital commitment is sorely tested as they become increasingly alienated not only from others, including their grown daughter, but from each other.
In order to stay solvent, Elsa abandons a beloved fresco restoration project to work as a telemarketer and as a part-time secretary to a shipping company executive in the evening. Idealistic Michele takes a job as a motor bike courier and then turns to renovating apartments with two of his former employees.
The dilemma that Silbio Soldini and co-writers (Doriana Leondeff, Francesco Piccolo, Federica Pontremoli) delineate revolves around the interconnectedness of love, money and status, a timely, relevant topic. Superbly acted in Italian with English subtitles, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Days and Clouds” is a sensitive, subtle 7, sympathetically detailing the devastation of economic insecurity and the regeneration of a marriage.
