Le Conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love)

Paolo Sorrentino is potentially the best director I’ve discovered in the last couple of years. His films are almost in every way perfect and awe inspiring, they show a world whereby everything is bleak and pessimistic and even escape is impossible. Le Conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love) is his second film but by this point in his career he has shown more ambition and more talent than most of Hollywood and Europe, along with the wisdom and sophistication of many older directors. Contemporary cinema’s focus at the moment seems to be the smart; edgy and stylish thriller. Although I’m not opposed to this what frustrates me is that the direction of this focus is, as usual, westwards with such films as Michael Clayton and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and although I enjoyed both films greatly I can’t help but feel Le Conseguenze dell'amore did it better than them and essentially did it before them.

The film follows Titta di Girolamo played by the phenomenal Toni Servillo, who has been living a self-confessed boring and repetitive existence is a hotel room for the past ten years, his family have left him and everyone seems out to get him. His only distractions from this are his two habits: once a week he indulges in heroin and once a year he has all the blood in his body replaced. These two are seemingly ironic as they both involve change, but he himself is incapable of change; instead he must remain the same unhappy person for the rest of his life. The two can also been seen as being rather comforting and grounding as they principally remind him that he is human in every way and this is unchangeable. Titta’s only chance of escape is with the barmaid in the hotel, Sofia, but even at the chance of escape it is denied to him.

Sorrentino’s flawless direction and use of art direction give the film a sense of beauty which begins to feels somewhat ironic given the established sense of loneliness and isolation that Titta feels. This existence that he leads is so perfectly well executed that even when a surprise visit from his estranged brother and also the slightest dangling of a love interest fail to rouse him from his deadpan and stern personality. Even at the end when he is finally met with his demise there is no sense of remorse or regret, only the faint hint that he is disappointed that he is about to die.

As mentioned earlier, every aspect of the film is perfect and it leaves you with a sense that every constructed element has been perfectly timed and calculated to leave a sensory experience that is unlike any other. His use of music; sound; editing and cinematography seem unquestionable and at times his camera seems to perform movements that seem physically impossible; gliding through objects, people or the frame itself with a magically wistfulness that can only be compared to the likes of Stanley Kubrick or Jean-Luc Goddard. The overall affect of Sorrentino’s cinema leaves you drained and questioning the world around you much as the protagonists of his films do, the show you that the world is not romantic, it is not dreamlike but it is essentially a cold, harsh and lonely place whereby you will always be second place and things will never be reversed. Sorrentino’s films are the epitome of everything that is ignored in cinema today, but the epitome of everything that should be seen.