Dormant Beauty

The multilayered narrative of Marco Bellocchio’s latest film is constructed around Italy’s equivalent of the Terri Schiavo case, a legal struggle around the fate of a woman, Eluana Englaro, suspended in a vegetative coma for 17 years. Each story plays out on a different stylistic level: domestic drama (a liberal senator risks losing the love of his deeply religious daughter), social realism (a young doctor struggles to save a drug addict from herself), and operatic delirium (a famous actress creates a theatrical spectacle around her own daughter, a young woman kept alive by a respirator).

“Well-written, beautifully performed… there’s real humanity and tenderness.” - Olivier Lyttelton, IndieWire

“[A] thought-provoking exploration of life, love and politics.” - Variety