As directed by the gifted second-generation filmmaker Cristina Comencini, this incest-themed drama opens strongly and intensely, with one of the most suggestive, evocative, and haunting introductory sequences in memory: a series of long, sideways tracking shots that carry the audience through a vacant, fully furnished Italian home in which the ghosts of child abuse still linger. Comencini then uses painstaking detail to dispassionately etch out the first stages of psychological trauma for her central character, Sabina (the darkly beautiful Giovanna Mezzogiorno), as she unwittingly undergoes mnemonic recovery and acceptance of the fact that her father raped her childhood self on multiple occasions. Unfortunately (and infuriatingly, given the deft hand demonstrated by the director in the first act), when Sabina makes the pivotal trip to visit her brother (Luigi Lo Cascio) in Virginia about 30 minutes into the picture, the narrative derails by adding -- and crisscrossing between -- two unnecessary subplots with only the most tenuous connection to the central story. One involves a lesbian relationship that transpires between a blind girl and a middle-aged woman fleeing from memories of an unfaithful ex-husband; the other hinges on Sabina's live-in lover, the television actor Franco (Alessio Boni of The Best of Youth), who during the Christmas holidays grapples with his desire to cheat on Sabina with an actress from his program.
Comencini presumably intended to interpolate divertissements on the theme of trustworthiness, but these added substories detract attention from the central character arc, and -- even more problematically -- divest Sabina's tale of intensity and credibility. (One cannot help but sense that Comencini lacked the courage of her convictions necessary to follow Sabina's story through to its logical conclusion, instead bombarding us with narrative distractions.) The final act -- in which Sabina returns to Italy in mid-pregnancy and must not only unburden her childhood haunts to Franco, but face the sudden confession of his own infidelity -- is thematically correct, but represents a significant missed opportunity. For some unknown reason, Comencini keeps the final conversation between the lovers offscreen, when it feels as though she has been aggressively working toward this catharsis for the entire film; the viewer thus feels hugely betrayed. Neither is the rapidity of the lovers' reconciliation convincing; if Sabina's father violently ripped away her ability to trust men, would she be willing to reaccept Franco's confidences so fluidly and easily, especially given the fact that he is now the "untrustworthy father" of her own child? Here is a textbook case of a movie that begins brilliantly and degenerates into a cowardly, illogical misfire.