days and clouds (giorni e nuvole) 2007 region free dvd5 italian bcbc

Days and Clouds (Italian: Giorni e nuvole) is a 2007 Italian drama film directed by Silvio Soldini. It was entered into the 30th Moscow International Film Festival where Margherita Buy won the award for Best Actress.

(Contains movie and Optional English Subtitles. No menus or extras. Regular DVD quality (Not BD, 1080p etc...). Seeding always appreciated).



Synopsis

After years of putting it off, Elsa (Margherita Buy) finally returns to school to pursue her art history degree. But her newfound academic bliss crumbles when her husband, Michele (Antonio Albanese), loses his job and the duo is forced to sell their gorgeous flat. The ensuing financial strain soon takes a surprising toll on their marriage in director Silvio Soldini's intimate domestic drama, shot in beautiful Genoa.



Cast

Margherita Buy, Antonio Albanese, Alba Rohrwacher, Giuseppe Battiston, Carla Signoris, Fabio Troiano, Paolo Sassanelli, Arnaldo Ninchi



Hard Look at Tough Times for an Italian Marriage

Published: July 11, 2008



Silvio Soldini’s film “Days and Clouds” suggests that Italy’s middle class is as much under siege as that of the United States. In both countries, it appears, job security isn’t what it used to be, and corporate downsizing is plunging affluent families into sudden financial tailspins.



Michele (Antonio Albanese), the movie’s tight-lipped protagonist, is a stolid businessman in Genoa whose partners, one of whom is his oldest friend, oust him from the company after 20 years. Business is business, and when it clashes with friendship, friendship goes by the wayside.



He is so ashamed to deliver the bad news to his wife, Elsa (Margherita Buy), an art restorer who has just earned an advanced degree, that he keeps it from her until the morning after a lavish surprise birthday party he has arranged for her. Instead of going to work for the last two months, Michele confesses, he has been spending his days on his boat, which he will have to sell along with their home. All they have left is about 21,000 euros (not quite $33,000).



“Days and Clouds,” like Mr. Soldini’s 2000 film “Bread and Tulips,” observes a middle-aged couple in crisis. But this film — unlike its forerunner, which was set in Venice — is unblinkingly realistic. Genoa, with its narrow streets and quiet harbor, has none of the hallmarks of a glamorous international destination.



Elsa demands answers to questions any partner would ask. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why did you waste so much money on a fancy party and an expensive birthday present? Michele explains sheepishly that he wanted them to have one last bash.



After weighing the offer of a job that pays half his previous salary with a boss 15 years his junior, he turns it down. When he approaches an old acquaintance to whom he lent a large sum of money years earlier, the friend lies and insists he already paid it back.



“Days and Clouds” is a brave film simply for daring to portray a nightmare lurking in the minds of middle-aged workers, people who might fear a film that addresses their insecurities this bluntly. Of the few contemporary movies to take a hard look at the psychic cost of unemployment, the best is Laurent Cantet’s “Time Out.” That melancholy 2001 film followed a downsized executive existing in a state of metaphysical self-deception, who lies to his family about his lack of a job and persuades his friends to invest in a phantom enterprise. Because the situation in “Days and Clouds” is more mundane, it is more threatening to contemplate.



Initially the couple try to make the best of it. After moving to a small, noisy apartment, Michele makes the rounds of headhunters and employment agencies while Elsa suspends her unpaid work restoring centuries-old frescoes to shuttle between jobs as telemarketer and secretary. The ease with which she finds work only exacerbates her husband’s humiliation.



For a while Michele delivers parcels on a motorbike, but he quits after his 20-year-old daughter, Alice (Alba Rohrwacher), sees him making his rounds. He teams up with two low-level workers from his former company to move furniture and do painting and plastering. But as the weeks drag on, he becomes too depressed to get out of bed. During a fight Elsa calls him a spineless amoeba, and he leaves.



Family dynamics are a little different in Italy than in the United States. Traditional Mediterranean machismo compels Michele to put up more of a front to the world than his counterparts in America, where social mobility can be more fluid and marital roles less traditional.



But the same crushing economic forces are at work. If you’re over 50, it is increasingly difficult to regain your footing in the job market once you have lost it. The more prestigious your job, the greater the likelihood your identity is wrapped up in it. Without your work, who are you? Without his credentials and his income Michele’s self-esteem begins to collapse along with his marriage.



What the couple endure is the ultimate test of a relationship. And Mr. Albanese and Ms. Buy, in their un-showy ways, make their characters and their deeply lived-in relationship entirely believable. Elsa’s preferred work, in which she peels away one painted surface to reveal another, is a rich metaphor for the personal examination each must go through to discover if a fundamental bond exists. This sad, very grown-up movie convinces you that one does.