The Times bfi
London Film Festival 2004

The Consequences of Love
Paolo Sorrentino

Alan Docherty

At first sight Titta Di Girolamo is a high-class, middle-aged version of Camus' Meursault, a loner who is uninterested in casual relationships and feels nothing except for the most immediate pleasures. Sorrentino's outsider's only function is to carry a suitcase once a week for his mysterious employer.

Toni Servillo elegantly conveys the tedium of a man who is divorced not just from his family from the rest of the world. Every day he is in his hotel watching the other guests with an ice-cold detachment. It doesn't matter how much the world flirts with him - he passes the time as if he were dead. Maintaining an expression that is half hangdog, half corpse, it would take a lot for him to break out of the rut. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, he finally decides to take a risk, to take on the 'consequences of love.'

Lest you be misled, Consequences of Love has little to do with love, and certainly nothing to do with romance or sentiment. In contrast to Garden State, another film at this year's London Film Festival, The Consequences of Love asks more questions, is altogether more demanding, and as a result more rewarding.

To reveal much more would be significantly to reduce the pleasure. The Consequences Of Love it is artfully and beautifully photographed the script is spare, making high demands of an excellent cast.