Review of La Sapienza (2014) by Walter M — 26 Mar 2015

Despite any number of professional accolades, Alexandre(Fabrizio Rongione), an architect, finds his marriage with Alienor(Christelle Prot Landman) in rocky shape. So, they travel to a lake in Switzerland to spend some quality time together, trying to recapture some of the old magic. What they find instead is siblings Goffredo(Ludovico Succio) and Lavinia(Arianna Nastro). And then Alienor surprises her husband by volunteering to stay in town to look after the ailing Lavinia while Goffredo continues his architecture studies in Turin with Alexandre.

"La Sapienza" gets off to a rough start, as the movie assumes that Alexandre's sour mood is solely from his atheism, not something less existential, like say, severe constipation. Thankfully, the movie eventually recovers, allowing for an occasionally heady exploration of art, history, architecture, romance and most importantly sideburns. At the same time, the tone tends towards the deep end of the pretentiousness spectrum, sometimes unnecessarily so. And I'm still not exactly sure what this whole sapience thing was about but then I guess that's what Google is for.