A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Thursday, July 24, 2025

It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman, 2013)

Ronen Rubinstein and Gina Piersanti in It Felt Like Love

Cast: Gina Piersanti, Giovanna Salimeni, Ronen Rubinstein, Kevin Anthony Ryan, Nyck Caution, Nicolas Rosen, Case Prime. Screenplay: Eliza Hittman. Cinematography: Sean Porter. Production design: James Boxer. Film editing: Scott Cummings, Carlos Marques-Marcet. 

Eliza Hittman's first feature, It Felt Like Love, is a dip into the hormonal stew of adolescence, centered on 14-year-old Lisa (Gina Piersanti), who wants to be like her older but not wiser friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni). It's summer, and the girls don't have much to do besides hang out on the beach, while Chiara goes through a series of boyfriends. Taking her cues from her friend, Lisa singles out Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), who works in a convenience store, and makes a play for him that ends in an awkward sexual encounter. There's not much more to the film than that, but Hittman, working on a shoestring budget, manages to craft an edgy portrait of a time in life when desire dangerously encounters possibility.  


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