The nominee for the Goya award for best new director in 2011, Paula Ortiz (¨The Bride¨), dares to adapt this eponymous novel by Hemingway, starring Liev Schreiber (¨Spotlight¨, ¨Ray Donovan¨) as an aging military martinet. Set in post-World War II Italian Venice, Richard Cantwell, a war-torn American colonel, confronts the news that he has a terminal illness with stoic indifference. Determined to spend a weekend in quiet solitude, he commandeers a military driver to facilitate a visit to his old haunts in Venice. The military veteran is accompanied on his journey by Sergeant Jackson (Josh Hutcherson) as driver and bodyguard, bound for the city of canals. Once there, Cantwell's plans begin to unravel, a chance meeting with a young aristocrat, the intelligent Renata Contarini (Matilda de Angelis): the daughter of an impoverished Venetian countess who has fallen into disgrace, begins to rekindle his hope of renewal. However, Renata is about to become the wife of a wealthy young called Antonio (Giulio Berruti). The time that Cantwell spends with the young aristocrat describes a relationship of mutual knowledge, while the colonel strives to find out what happened to his son who died at the hands of the Nazis, in a Trieste camp.
This brooding film, set in post-WWII Italy, captures a fleeting moment of immortality where time stands still. The sad story contains the great Hemingway themes of love, war, youth, and age. Liev Schreiber gives a terrific acting as tired American Army Colonel Richard Cantwell, haunted by the war, he is a bona fide hero who faces news of his illness with stoic disregard, and Matilda De Angelis is very attractive as the remarkable young woman begins to rekindle in him the hope of renewal. They're stunningly accompanied by a fine support cast, such as Josh Hutcherson, Laura Morante, Giulio Berruti, Danny Huston and Enzo Cilenti creating works of enormous dramatic value. An interpretive tableau that accompanies Schreiber's role who carries out a sober and credible characterization, in which the silences are as important as the words that are said. And being developed through a territory very similar in locations and emotions to that undertaken by Gustav von Aschenbach/Dick Bogarde, in 'Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice'.
It has a magnificent black-and-white photography with some color intervals. And shot in square format -in 4:3- by acclaimed cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, who has worked with prestigious directors such as Milos Forman, Pedro Almodovar and Woody Allen. The formal attractiveness thanks to cameraman Aguirresarobe is in many moments hypnotic, captivating, stimulating, providing an enormous pictorial talent, although in others it can become too saturated. For years, the adaptation of this novel by Ernest had been the dream of great filmmakers such as John Huston or Robert Altman and even Burt Lancaster desperately wanted to play the aging Colonel. The motion picture was brilliantly and professionally directed by Paula Ortiz (De tú ventana a la mía, La novia, Teresa). Paula Ortiz recreates competently a film full of environmental nostalgia, in a city of Venice where you can glimpse the decadence that devastates the starring's nights and days. Rating: 7/10. Better than average.
