RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•Jack declares himself to Kate and asks her to marry him, she accepts enthusiastically. After the ceremony, Jack wakes up in a bare room, furnished only with a bed and a desk; he is still wearing his wedding suit, around him holes in the walls, from which gas occasionally escapes. On the wall, there is also a panel with two buttons, one to say "yes" and the other to say "no". Simultaneously, Kate is in the same conditions as her new husband, but in another room. Images of their private life begin to scroll on the walls, then the panel asks a question to which it is asked to answer affirmatively or negatively. The nightmare has just begun and the love between Jack and Kate is about to be put into question.
Do you remember the television program that aired in the 1980s "Tra moglie e marito"? It was broadcast on Canale 5 and hosted by Marco Columbro, the dynamic saw couples of wives and husbands who were questioned separately on the same question and then the answers were compared to check the real marital feeling. The thriller "True Love", directed by the debutant Enrico Clerico Nasino, is nothing more than "Tra moglie e marito" in the times of "Saw".
The psychological torture porn invades in fact the marital sphere, literally testing the newlyweds with the aim of testing their love and mutual knowledge. The mechanism is well-known and owes more than a coffee to the saga started by James Wan, with minimal grafts from a single location like "Cube - The Cube" by Vincenzo Natali. The result brought home by "True Love" is interesting but not fully successful, as evidenced by a certain repetitiveness of action and an ending not entirely satisfying.
Behind "True Love" there is Mercurio Domina by Fabio Guaglione and Fabio Resinaro, who write, produce and take care of many other aspects related to the technical department of the film. But behind "True Love" there is also Wildside, the production company of Fausto Brizzi and Marco Martani, the gurus of the new Italian comedy, who co-produce the film under the aegis of Rai Cinema. Furthermore, the intricate production maze of "True Love" is completed with the American co-participation in production, which puts in handiwork and actors.
Nasino's film presents itself very well, it has a meticulously crafted look enhanced by a beautiful photography for the interiors and an interesting direction rich in camera virtuosity. Also the idea of using a multitude of "eggs" to film the confinement of Jack and Kate, almost like a series of recordings made with closed-circuit surveillance cameras, is winning, making varied a film that by force of circumstances would not have been able to be. What disappoints about this feature film is the narrative itinerary, which shows the tail after a few minutes. The action and narrative development are excessively repetitive and little serves the insertion of a "third uncomfortable" and interventions on the physical integrity of the recluses if then the story ends in the most predictable of ways. Interesting in this direction is the choice to say the minimum possible about causes and whys, although such a device could leave a bitter taste in the mouth of more than one viewer.
Unclear is the management of narrative times, watching the film, in fact, it seems that from the moment the two are locked up to the end of the story is almost a story in real time, but on the bodies of the characters the passage of time is intuited with the evident physical deterioration that makes one deduce a imprisonment lasting days, if not weeks. This lack of coincidence between real time and perceived time sometimes leads to confusion and disorientation and on which perhaps more attention should have been paid.
Kudos to the lead actors John Broterthon and Ellen Hollman (already Saxa in the TV series "Spartacus"), credible in showing suffering, anger and resentment.
"True Love" presents itself, therefore, as a product with good commercial potential, although the predictability and the stretching of a situation more suited to a short or a medium-length film make it a product not entirely successful.
Add half a pumpkin.
