| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 4, 2004

Blends romance, mystery and fantasy to beguiling, if slightly bewildering, effect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2004

There are two stories in Facing Windows, one of them profound and deeply moving, the other pure soap opera.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 12, 2004

Well-intentioned but overburdened.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 1, 2004

Ozpetek ends up with a lot of balls in the air, and he has to do some scrambling to keep up. He pulls it off, but it feels like he's making this harder than it needs to be.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 23, 2004

As the relationship progresses between Giovanna and Davide, Facing Windows becomes refined with deeper truths.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 23, 2004

Thanks to fine performances and a grounded script, the pieces of this intriguing little puzzle all manage to fit.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 23, 2004

The film's puzzlelike structure is a help; Simone's secret may not be hard to guess, but watching him work it out with the aid of Giovanna and Lorenzo consistently holds our interest.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 22, 2004

It's a corny and utterly implausible story in many ways -- but, like The Notebook, it's an implausible romance that connects with us because of the lush style and the power of the performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 22, 2004

Ozpetek is an enriching director. More than a presentation of its contents, every scene seems also to be a distillation of the matters that led to it.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2004

This glossy veneer of artificiality, handled masterfully in the films of Douglas Sirk, Todd Haynes and Pedro Almodovar, doesn't feel classic here so much as cheesy.

| Jul 16, 2004

It's Italian, it's actually quite mesmerizing in the manner of '50s psychological melodrama held together by incredible coincidences, everyone in it is splendidly attractive, and when you get out, you will be thinking: 'I have to get a pie soon.'

| Jul 16, 2004

It's ultimately as soft and hollow as fresh-baked Italian bread.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 9, 2004

Thanks to a soulful performance by Giovanna Mezzogiorno, it's also eminently watchable, even as we resist its machinations.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 9, 2004

Fluidly directed, superbly acted, boasting a story that wraps itself snugly around big emotional issues but stops just short of sentimentality.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 9, 2004

A quiet, lovely, thoughtful Italian movie.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 8, 2004

Though the film's multiple strands strain to blend, they do give the protags' ill-fated romance a level of deeper, more involving meaning.

| Jun 29, 2004

This too-sentimental drama does feature a sterling performance by Giovanna Mezzogiorno as a love-struck housewife dissatisfied with her lot, thus providing the only watchable element of an otherwise disappointing movie.

Full Review | Jun 29, 2004

Poignant and carefully observed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2004

A movie to treasure.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 25, 2004