Ten Winters (2009)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Great Film overall

Absolutely Fantastic

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

a puzzle more than romance. a war more than a love story. romantic but, more important, smart. or, in few scenes, almost wise. because it is not only a love story but a story about the science to discover yourself in the other. like a picture from many crumbs. far to be original, it is an refreshing story about a young woman and a young man across a decade. small gestures, scenes of angry and regrets, delicate meetings and a lot of frustration, the Italian spirit and an universal story. the precise measure, the sense of ages, the art to give to each character traits of a sketch, the landscapes and the levels of life and the need of the other, the house and the teenager spirit who remains axis of a touching film who transforms in inspired manner the rules of the romance.

When the DVD of this movie arrived by mail from Italy yesterday, I vaguely remembered ordering it several weeks ago, but I couldn't remember WHY I'd ordered it. I still don't remember why.I'm gay, and heterosexual romance ordinarily doesn't interest me at all (to be honest, it repels me at least as much as homosexual romance repels many straight people) unless there's something besides romance going on. Since Dieci inverni (Ten Winters) definitely is a romance (of sorts), and since it definitely is heterosexual, I was and still am puzzled about why I wanted to see it enough to order it from Italy.I'd never heard of its director or any of the actors, and the only explanation I can come up with is that maybe I saw a picture of Michele Riondino somewhere, wanted to see more, discovered this movie and ordered it. (I don't actually remember that happening, but I can't think of any other explanation, and Riondino certainly is worth investigating.) Whatever my reason was for ordering it, I'm very glad I did, because it's a lovely, fascinating and very rewarding movie.I can understand why someone expecting a typical romantic movie would be disappointed in this one, because there is a lot more trouble than romance between the two lead characters. Their relationship develops slowly and fitfully over the ten winters covered in the movie, and they don't see each other during the other seasons.One extraordinary accomplishment that may go unnoticed is the excellent way the characters age over the ten years covered in the movie. Each year they look a year older, and at the end they look ten years older than they did in the beginning - but how the aging was accomplished was so subtle that I can't explain how they did it.It must have been some subtle combination of makeup, hair styles, clothes and gradually maturing behavior from the actors. But however they did it, it's as nearly perfect as it can be. I never thought either "But they look just like they did last year" or "Look at that stupid makeup, trying to make them look older when they're not." How they did it was totally transparent, as it should be but almost never is, even in big-budget Hollywood movies.Several times during the movie, things got so bad between Silvestro and Camilla that I thought they'd blown it for good, and that however many of the ten winters were left would find them far apart. But somehow they kept crossing each other's paths, and every time there'd be some new and unanticipated development in their relationship.It's a formula that's been used before, as in Same Time Next Year, but what makes this one different and fascinating is the variety of attractions and dysfunctions that manage to keep them bouncing in and out of each other's lives with such erratic regularity, but that - amazingly - never veer off into melodrama or cliché.What drives them together and back apart is different each year, and yet the variety never seems either forced or phony, never feels like the director is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find something new. Each year's drama feels fresh and real and believable.Although I still don't know why I bought this movie, I enjoyed it so much that I'm going to watch it again now.

I'd hoped to enjoy this movie, be engaged by it... sadly neither happened.It was my wedding anniversary and first film for the 2010 Italian Film Festival playing in Australia in Sep/Oct 2010. So I was looking for something romantic. (In the synopsis Ten Winters is described as a romantic drama, it's definitely not a comedy). With the festival you hope your first picks are good ones as this is encouraging to see more. When the first one like this is a bit of downer it cast doubts over going to other screenings.For me I knew we were in trouble on 2 or 3 fronts. Firstly the leading players, secondly the locations. What I've seen described elsewhere as a quaint cottage on one of the Venice Islands that the story in Venice is largely centred around. I'd hoped they might have been on the Venice Lido somewhere off the main street. But the cottage just off the end of the pier where the ferry docked looked like a fishing shack, cold, unloved, unappealing. Of the players the lead actress reminded be of Isla Fisher with the personality turned down. I liked the supporting actresses better, especially the ones who played Silvestros other girlfriends. Likewise with the men. the leading character was a bit geeky. I preferred the actor and the character who played Camilla's boyfriend when she went to live in Russia.Being an Italian/Russian co-production the film moves to and fro Venice and Russia. Sadly I was looking for a romantic film. This was more drama, with a feeling of back and forth and going around in circles. Perhaps with hindsight I should have seen it coming. Ten Winters as the English title name is a clue. I obviously was after 10 Springs or 10 Summers preferring my films to be light and brighter than this one. But 10 Winters we were stuck with and 10 fairly long ones at that.I guess the purpose of IMDb is to tell it as you see it, so this was that for me.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - From the Italian Film Festival booklet here's their synopsis"Ten Winters (Dieci inverni) A decade of missed chances beguiles and rewards the quietly unassuming debut from Valerio Mieli who won the David di Donatello (Italian Academy) Award 2010 for Best First Time Director for this moving tale of two friends who secretly have deeper feelings for one another. TEN WINTERS screened in the Venice International Film Festival's Controcampo sidebar.Winter, 1999. Camilla (Isabella Ragonese, La Nostra Vita IFF10), a student of Slavic literature, leaves home to take up residence in a semi-derelict house in an overcast Venice devoid of tourists. On the last leg of her journey - a ferry to her island - she's spotted by a would-be Romeo, Silvestro (Michele Riondino, The Past Is a Foreign Land, IFF08). Despite getting the brush-off, Silvestro follows Camilla to her home and manages to insinuate himself as a guest for the night but he fails in his gentle efforts to seduce her. Over the next ten years, Silvestro and Camilla develop a strong bond, and the narrative captures a beautifully painful, reflective push and pull between two souls who keep finding their way back to each other.Charming performances by leads Michele Riondino and Isabella Ragonese combine with a restrained, intelligent atmosphere to create an involving romantic drama which echoes the mantra "Would've, could've, should've" and highlights that, in life, timing is everything"