The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

A little wooden at times - particularly early on - but tasteful and elegant in its focus on familial relationships, romance & memory, and social exclusion. A marvellous sense of impermanence and realism.

Sad, haunting film boosted Sanda to stardom and won an Oscar as Best Foreign Film.

The main themes are all obvious from the beginning, and don't get explored during the course of the film to any satisfaction. Instead we have a predictably melodramatic love story, awful music and too much makeup. The cinematography is nice, although De Sica does nothing very interesting with it. There's just nothing to the story, and no emotional weight or investment in the characters. It was hard to sit through because it's so incredibly dull and banal.

worth a watch

8-

87.50

A lushly made film, but the acting really shitted me, it's very subdued and lulling and as unexciting as you can get, making this a fairly uncompelling portrayal of a very compelling situation. The opening credits are very nifty and I like the ending, but everything in between is difficult to enjoy.

De Sica attempts to pull the rug from under you with the ending. Sadly there's so little invested in the plot and characters before it happens that it doesn't work on any level.

Beautiful and tragic (in the classic sense of "tragic")