The Wait

classified 12A S
Film

Please note: This was screened in July 2016

Director
Piero Messina
Cast
Juliette Binoche, Giorgio Colangeli, Lou de Laâge
Details
100 mins, Subtitled, 2015, Italy/France

Juliette Binoche gives one of the finest performances of her career as a grieving mother welcoming her son’s fiancée to her idyllic Sicilian home in this dazzling and emotionally rich debut feature from new Italian wunderkind Piero Messina.

Still reeling from the sudden death of a loved one and roaming around the vast rooms of her beautiful Sicilian villa, Anna (Binoche) is forced out of her shell when Jeanne (Lou de Laâge) - her son Giuseppe’s estranged fiancée - unexpectedly comes to stay. As the two women await Giuseppe’s arrival, they slowly begin to form a connection, and Jeanne, dislocated and a little mystified at first by her fiancée’s absence, gradually gives in to the charms of the volcanic island. But as Anna struggles to conceal a tragedy that has recently befallen them, sooner or later her secret must come out and her constructed fantasy starts to crumble.

Spectacularly shot, wonderfully conceived and superbly executed, this emotionally complex and original story heralds Messina as a talented and original new directorial voice (having earned his chops as assistant director to his compatriot Paolo Sorrentino on The Great Beauty). A contemplative, tentative film whose discreet scenes of quiet power gradually coils and builds to a memorable conclusion.


× Close

Help us make our website work better for you

We use Google Analytics to gather information on how our website is used. This information helps us to make changes to our website that improve the usefulness and overall experience for our visitors. If you would like to help us to make continuous improvements to our website, please allow us to set "first-party" cookies (only readable by us) so that we can distinguish visitors and gain greater insights.

Allow cookies for analytics Deny cookies for analytics