The Man Who Loves

Roberto is a pharmacist in Turin, a quiet man in his forties. When we meet him, Sara has just left him, and he is devastated. He calls, he waits outside her door, he cannot sleep. Then the film steps back in time, to Roberto with Alba, a woman who loves him completely. It was Roberto who ended that relationship. The man who is suffering now is the same man who once caused exactly this pain.

Maria Sole Tognazzi, daughter of the great Ugo Tognazzi, made this as her second feature, and it opened the Rome Film Festival in 2008. The idea is simple and quietly brilliant: a love story seen from the male side, with a man who is both victim and executioner. Pierfrancesco Favino carries the whole film, and he is superb, especially in the long stretch of heartbreak, where he makes a grown man's collapse feel embarrassing, real and painful. Ksenia Rappoport is Sara and Monica Bellucci is Alba, and both are better than the film's modest reputation suggests.

Around Roberto there is his family, his happily married parents and his brother Carlo, who is facing struggles of his own. The soundtrack is by Carmen Consoli. It is small, gentle, and occasionally a little too polished. But the structure gives it a real sting: by the end you understand that nobody is only the one who is left. A tender, intelligent film about love, and one of Favino's finest performances.