The Consequences of Love

A compulsive loner, Titto (Servillo) lives in a Swiss hotel, masquerading as a financial broker while acting as a go-between delivering huge quantities of cash to a sorting-house bank. That he's lived this way for 24 years without his true identity being discovered is a tribute to his iron-willed self-discipline; he shoots up heroin once a week, every week, always on the same day at the same time. Bald, bespectacled, monosyllabic and middle-aged, Titto nonetheless attracts the attention of the hotel's barmaid Sofia (Magnani) and soon becomes infatuated with her, for which weakness I blame him not one whit - Sofia is not entirely unlike a young and precociously Italian variation on the basic Catherine Zeta-Jones model. "This may well be the most dangerous thing I've ever done," Titto says as he finally takes notice of Sofia's overtures, and so it proves - Titto's life begins to fall apart almost immediately. Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, and shot by Luca Bigazzi, The Consequences of Love has a sterile feel that points up Titto's friendless, austere lifestyle; at times the film has the slick vacuity of a car advertisement. All intentional, one presumes; this is an intriguing character study rather than a crime caper, with the emphasis on the disintegration of Titto's carefully constructed facade.