Unlike the main title may suggest THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE is not your typical romantic comedy or even romantic drama… no, it's well far beyond that! It's mostly a drama for sure but where love enters in a very dark and unusual way… It tells the story of an unsympathetic and lonely man TITTA DI GIROLAMO (played by Toni Servillo) who lives in a hotel room for about 8 years and has a very solitary and monotonous live. He has some dark secrets as well… Nothing changes his routines until he falls in love for the incredibly beautiful green eyes of SOFIA (Olivia Magnani), the girl who works in the Hotel's bar.The plot is straight to follow but the kind of cinematography used and the way the scenes are mounted turn this movie a bit puzzling at parts. The camera-work is excellent and the way the director shot some angles and details are simply brutal! I'm talking about the scene in the hotel room when the camera passes over DI GIROLAMO's head and then stops shooting his face upside down! Or even the very two last scenes of the movie. These are just two examples of this great directing work! The soundtrack is quite nice as well.This story doesn't end unsolved but I think there're some questions that still without answers at the end, like what happened to the mysterious SOFIA… To sum up, it's a good film with a great performance from Toni Servillo.

Italian screenwriter and director Paolo Sorrentino's second feature film which he wrote, premiered In competition at the 57th Cannes International Film Festival in 2004, was shot on locations in Italy and is an Italian production which was produced by producers Domenico Procacci, Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima and Angelo Curti. It tells the story about a middle-aged man named Titta De Girolamo who has lived in a anonymous hotel in Switzerland during the last eight years. Titta is a well dressed and short-spoken man who has maintained an ice-cold facade for a long time and who spends his days at the hotel's bar and lobby where he distantly observes the personnel and the guests, but his life alters the day he unexpectedly allows himself to become interested in a young and attractive bartender named Sofia.Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino had made a number of short films before he in 2001 made his debut feature film "One Man Up" and he received international recognition three years later with his next narrative feature. Within the 100 passing minutes this piece of art lasts, times existence disappears and one's eyes is magnetically drawn towards Paolo Sorrentino's minimalistic vision of an esoteric character's monotone and ritualistic life at a hotel where colorful individuals live in a spiral of repetitive behavior. Through the protagonist's point of view, a reflective voice-over narration, sterling production design by Italian production designer Lino Fiorito, cinematography by Italian cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and a great score by Italian composer Pasquale Catalano, Paolo Sorrentino depicts a refined study of character about a nostalgic and introvert 49-year-old man who against his own principles let's the light into his life at the moment he establishes communication with an accommodating woman who has spent two years trying to declare her existence to him. This fascinating play with perspectives which almost exclusively takes place at a hotel, becomes a distinct film experience much due to Paolo Sorrentino's characteristic use of close-ups, repetitions, slow-motion scenes, long takes and sequences with rapid editing where the music is impressively well calculated, and is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, quiet though intensifying continuity, cinematographic expertise, aesthetic depiction of an almost mechanical upper class milieu, synoptic screenplay, quick-witted dialog and the understated and convincing acting performances by Italian actor Toni Servillo and Italian actress Olivia Magnani. An existential drama, an unconventional love fable, a thriller, a neo-noir or a gangster drama, Paolo Sorrentino's genre mix is well-constructed and this ingenious work is inspiring cinematic creativity from the innovating opening scene to the stylized ending. A brilliant exercise of style and form where image, sound, movement, figure of speech and narration is sublimely incorporated.

I've seen this film so many times, It's that good. Maybe because I can relate to Tittas way of life is the reason why. Not everyone would find it to their taste. Also, my Italien is improving after each viewing. Am I a sad case? Thankyou Mr Sorrentino. I look forward to your next film. Although I did not see the film at a cinema, I have the DVD and would encourage anyone to buy it. The Special feature extras alone is worth the price. The amount of time a director spends on the making of a film is very seldom appreciated, the extras on the DVD gives an excellent insight to the making of a film. As for the story of the film, I'm bias.I happen to rave about it to all my friends, but as I said before, I relate very much to the main character who is a loner in a situation not of his own choosing. The Mafia in Sicily use Titta to launder their money in a Swiss bank. He owes them for costing them Millions of dollars years ago in stock market deal that went wrong.Love kills.

Very slow, dull, enigmatic film. MAybe the kind of film Jean-Luc Godard would have made had he been Italian. Certainly conveys how tedious, repetitious, joyless and empty a person's life can be, but I don't usually go to the cinema to find that out! The plot (such as it is) doesn't convince. Why a gorgeous hotel receptionist (an exception to the dullness of the film) would be the slightest bit interested in a moody, chain-smoking, silent loner who speaks in 'deep' aphorisms baffles me. Very difficult to feel any sympathy with the main character. One feels like shaking him by the throat and telling him to 'snap out of it!'. His brother is a much more human character. The ending is inconclusive and puzzling. Everyone in the cinema (when I saw the film) went out muttering about how they nearly fell asleep. Of course, it shouldn't have to be a Hollywood Bruce Willis-style 'shhot-em-up' and 'crash-bang' fiesta, but a little bit of energy and action would have made it a lot more thrilling. One of the best Italian films ever?! Pleease...An art-house, curiosity at best.