A Place for Lovers (1968) User Reviews

O.K., but that ONE scene! Wow!

[Pamela-5 · 7/10 · 23 March 2007]

First, O.K., this film is a guilty pleasure. So I'm an inveterate romantic. So kill me.

There is one scene when Faye says to Marcello, "I don't want your pity." He responds by saying, increasingly heatedly, "Pity? PITY? WHAT pity?" Then he throws her down on the ground and kisses her, saying, "I LOVE you! I LOVE you! I LOVE you!" Now, c'mon. If you're a romantic (and you probably aren't), you'll adore this scene. Others will become nauseous. So sorry.

Sometimes a girl has to have her fantasies. Apologies to all you realists and intellectual cinemaphiles.

A case of undying love

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 15 March 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Nowhere as bad as you were made to think it is in it being considered to be one of the 50 worse films of all times the film Vittorio De Sica's "A Place for Lovers" does have its moments. Especially in the interacting between its two stars Faye Dunnaway as the rich American divorcée Julia and Marcello Mostroianni as Valerion the Italian race car driver and inventor of a new revolutionary air bag filled with water. The water bag would not only save countless lives on the road but prevent cars from catching fire as well after a near fatal traffic accident.

It's Julia who despite looking as fit and healthy as a Olympic caliber womens gymnast or swimmer is suffering for a fatal and unnamed illness that will soon kill her. It's Julia who had earlier escaped from a New York City hospice center to spend her last days in sunny Italy. It's while catching the local TV news in her rented mansion, she seems to be loaded with cash, Julia sees Valerion whom she once met in the states. It was Valerin who gave her his phone number in Italy if she ever visited there. Wanting to spend her last days on earth with the handsome Valerion Julia gives him a call to come up and see her for a few days before she checks out for good. What he doesn't realizes is that Julie in checking out for good means that she's days away from dying of her fatal and unnamed illness! It doesn't take long for Valerion to fall madly in love with Julia but in her just having days to live she wants to break off the relationship before he finds out the fatal medical condition that she's in. This happens almost by accident when Julia's good friend Maggie, Caroline Mortimer, from America shows up at a ski lodge in the Italian Alps where the two are staying. Maggie wants to get Julia back to be treated for her illness even though its fatal and there's no chance that she'll survive the treatment. It that the treatment would only ease the pain, with heavy doses of morphine, she's suffering as she goes under the waves or white sheet in the local county morgue!

***SPOILERS*** It takes a lot of soul searching on Valerion's part but he finally comes to the sad conclusion that the little time he has with Julia should be spent in making her happy and not feel that she's on her way out, from life, as the unnamed and fatal illness takes hold of her in its final and fatal stages. Going so far in letting Julia behind the wheel to show her how in love he is with her Valierion risks his as well as Julia's life in her madly driving through the dangerous roads in the Alps in her attempt to kill herself. It was after that incident that Julia finally came to her sense and agreed to go back to the NYC hospice center and, with the treatment provided to her there, die both quietly and peacefully and most of all without pain! Which in fact was the best present that a tearful and love sick Valerion could have given her!

P.S Jokes aside "A Place for Lovers" started a trend in the movies about fatal and unnamed disease flicks among lovers that's still around,now over 40 years, today. With the granddaddy of those movies "Love Story" being released two years later in 1970 which became the biggest money making film of that year!

Commenting On A Place For Lovers...

[mister_sebastian · 27 July 2000]

... is a rather odd and thankless task. I never dreamt of thinking about the likes of Vittorio De Sica, Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni without using the highest of praise, but this uninteresting, plodding 1969 film provided me with a chance to do so.

This film is proof that the unthinkable, what we judge to be impossible and beyond imagination, can happen.

Dunaway is Julia, a peculiar, to say the least, american woman who makes a living out of designing gowns, who has an affair with Valerio, a married italian engineer working on the development of the airbag.

They're rich, they're glamorous, they're beautiful, they're in love... nothing could part them. Except Julia is suffering from a terminal illness, and is bound to die in a matter of days.

Sticking to the basic rules of screenwriting as I know them, this movie is irritatingly plodding. We only discover that Julia is dying towards the end, and we never know whose is the main dilemma - Julia's or Valerio's. Should they stick together and face bravely Julia's last days on Earth? is the main query, I guess. The only problem is that this query, this dilemma, is presented to the audience in the last twenty minutes of film, and resolved - better yet, unresolved - in the last five. The other 70 minutes or so of film are spent as they stay together and play amusing little games with each other. A time in which the five writers of the film could easily delve into their main characters psyches - if anything else - is wasted. Julia's just plain weird and depressed, and Valerio seems terribly cold and unfeeling.

It also clearly aspires to be profound. It aims at being something lyric, but, trapped inside it's own pretentious attitude, it becomes a schmaltzy tearjerker.

The acting is not bad at all, though. But the script provides Dunaway and Mastroianni with little chance to showcase their many talents. Also, the set designs are gorgeous, as mentioned by the first reviewer, and the soundtrack is lovely. The title song, written by Manuel De Sica - hail, nepotism! - is sung by none other than Ella Fitzgerald.

Well, all in all, this movie is a bizarre one, but it is worth viewing nevertheless, mainly as existing proof that nothing - I mean, nothing - is impossible. :)

I think Moonspinner55 has this movie pegged.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 25 April 2011]

Before I began writing my review, I read through Moonspinner55's and noticed that although they seemed to have this film pegged, they sure have a lot of 'not helpfuls'. While this sort of thing is very common, it's sad--as their review very nicely summed up this film.

Faye Dunaway's performance was reminiscent of a zombie--a well-coiffed, bejeweled and heavy false eyelashed zombie. And I really don't so much blame her but the terrible script and the wrong direction by a very talented director...Vittoria De Sica. Perhaps this film is why after her huge success in "Bonnie and Clyde" her career just kind of fizzled.

Let's talk about De Sica just a bit. He is one of my favorite directors--directing such masterpieces as "The Children Are Watching Us" (I'd put this in my Top 10 of best films ever), "Miracle in Milan" and "Umberto D". However, the sort of films he directed brilliantly had some things in common--and are so completely unlike "A Place For Lovers" and other De Sica miscues (such as "Indiscretion of an American Wife"). His best works are of the Italian Neo-Realistic style--using non-actors in the roles and emphasizing the 'everyman' approach to the problems in the film. In other words, real people in real situations. However, when it came to the glossy love stories, this brilliant director was cold, impersonal and pretty dreadful at times. He just didn't seem to know how to use these people in love stories. Yet, with famed Sophia Loren in a non-love story, he created the brilliant "Two Women". Love stories with big-name casts he just seemed ill-suited--though as an actor he did fine in such films (and appeared in about 150 films).

Here in "A Place for Lovers", the film is wooden--unemotional and disconnected. This is odd, as the film is about a dying woman--yet you really could care less for her. She is unlikable and stiff. A better script surely would have helped, but giving his actress the suggestion to smile would have helped even more! I loved the director, but here he is way out of his comfort zone.

As a result of a bad story, bad direction and lifeless characters (though Marcello Mastroiani isn't too bad), the film is painfully dull and not worth your time---UNLESS. That is unless you are a nut like me who LIKES seeing bad films on occasion. In fact, this movie is number 47 on my quest to see all 50 of the films featured in Harry Medved's brilliant "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time". While I don't always agree with all of his choices, as a teenager he was able to compile the list and write an amazingly funny and clever book--long before anyone thought to come up with bad movie lists or suggest actually TRYING to see bad films. I am not sure I'd have included "A Place For Lovers", though if you are trying to list a movie from either the worst romance or worst illness categories, it sure is a reasonable choice!

If you care about such an odd quest, I have just obtained the final three films from this list and anticipate soon reviewing "King Richard and the Crusaders", "North West Mounted Police" and "Daughter of the Jungle"--then my bizarre and twisted hobby will be at an end. Then, it's off on some other bizarre and twisted quest!! Happy viewing, folks.

Che delusione...

[Auntie_Inflammatory · 4/10 · 4 March 2020]

A romantic drama, set in beautiful Northern Italy, directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Faye Dunaway... Seems like a recipe for success, right?

Alas, no. It just doesn't work at all.

You can't feel much for the two main characters because you don't really get to know them. Valerio (Mastroianni) is an engineer who lives with a girlfriend in Milan. Julia (Dunaway) is a divorced, American designer. They can afford to stay at gigantic villas and luxury alpine retreats. That's all the viewer gets. Valerio seems nice, if you ignore the fact that he's cheating on his girlfriend with Julia. Julia comes across as cold. She does a couple of things that seem kind (saving a mongrel from a dog-catcher, giving a maid a bunch of her fancy, expensive clothes) but then she also steals a guy's suitcase. Oh yeah, she comes close to pushing Valerio off a cliff at one point too. Oopsie!

Julia has one of those mysterious movie diseases, where the person is just a few weeks away from dropping dead but looks perfectly fine and exhibits no signs of illness or fatigue whatever. It's almost an hour in before Julia reveals her secret (but of course, if you watch the film now, it's given away in every description).

They fall madly in love in a week but what is their attraction based on, other than the physical? When they first get together Julia says, "Let's not say too much," but we could've learned more about them through their conversations, if they ever had any real conversations.

When Valerio answers the phone call from Maggie but then doesn't tell Julia about it, does he do it because he's selfish and wants to keep Julia with him or because he's trying to do what he thinks Julia wants? You just don't know him well enough to judge.

A couple of scenes that remind you that you're watching a 1960s Italian film occur on Julia and Valerio's first night together, when they attend a dinner party that seems like something right out of a Fellini movie. The well-off, gaudily attired and styled guests watch a slide show of ancient, erotic statuary and architecture, accompanied by a lecture. Afterwards, everyone draws cards for an adult version of "Seven Minutes in Heaven." Julia contemplates taking part in the game. Valerio (as yet unaware that she is engaging in her last hurrah) is turned off by the spectacle and angry that she would consider it.

The scene in front of the light of the projector, where Julia starts moaning about how she doesn't want Valerio's sympathy and he screams about how he loves her and then they sink to the table, kissing, was meant to elicit an emotional response and it did... It made me want to reach through the TV and slap them both! Get a grip, you frickin' drama queens!

Nitpicky thing that bugged me: There's a couple of slightly fuzzy close-ups of Julia towards the end of the film (when she's on the phone).

It's disappointing when you watch a film that turns out to not be very good. It's even more annoying when the movie has many of the elements that make up a good film; a potentially interesting premise, attractive leads, who are also good actors, a director who is capable of greatness, scenic locations, and it still turns out to be a dud. It's odd that it took 5 screenwriters to write this script. What's odder still is that it was adapted from a play so they weren't even writing a screenplay from scratch!

I guess that old saying about "too many cooks" is true.

I suffered more during this movie than the dying heroine

[highwaytourist · 1/10 · 4 July 2015]

I remember watching this film on the late, late, late show during the early 1980's. I suffered from insomnia and still do. But when this movie was over, I slept soundly. In fact, I had a hard time staying awake. This just might be the most boring movie I've ever seen. Perhaps the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor opus "Boom!" is more dull, but don't waste your life comparing notes! Faye Dunaway as a fashion designer with incurable movie disease and Marcello Mastroianni as the engineer who gives her one last fling on her way to the cemetery deliver sleepwalking performances. There is some comic relief with the musical score, which is so overwrought, it made me chuckle during some of the dramatic highlights. Whoever gave this film a positive review must have been bribed to do it.

Devastatingly dull...

[moonspinner55 · 2/10 · 1 April 2001]

Before I read her telling autobiography, I didn't sense much about Faye Dunaway that was either grounded or warm. Of course she's a first-rate actress, but she's also an aloof one (most of the time she could be acting in front of the mirror). Her performance in "A Place For Lovers" (the US title) is no different. She never connects with the viewer and spends the entire time staring at Marcello Mastroianni's collar (these two did have an off-camera affair--go figure!). The romantic set-up: he's a married Italian, she's an American businesswoman in poor health. She also harbors a peculiar death wish for the both of them. This is an odd, unaffecting picture only worth-watching out of curiosity, but it won't thrill anyone--particularly fans of Dunaway, who floats by in a whiff of chiffon, with impossibly blonde hair and impossibly thick eyelashes. * from ****

Marcello Mastroianni as a married man meets and stays with Faye Dunaway

[clanciai · 10/10 · 7 October 2018]

One of those late, very sensitive and poignant Vittorio de Sica films, concentrating entirely on a personal relationship. I always regarded Faye Dunaway as one of the most beautiful actresses ever, but here she surpasses herself both in beauty and acting. Mastroianni is always reliable and original, and he actually matches Faye Dunaway more than well, although this is not Sofia Loren. There are two additional factors making this film extra remarkable, the fact that the script writer is Cesare Zavattini, who wrote all of de Sica's best films, and the overwhelmingly beautiful music by Manuel de Sica, his son, I suppose, that veils the film in a silken bandage of urgent soothing beauty, just like in his last film "The Voyage" with Sofia Loren and Richard Burton. The locations are among the loveliest in north eastern Italy, by the coast north of Venice and in a central hill station in the Dolomites. The story might seem superficial at first, especially if you don't know anything and haven't read anything about it, as the casual relationship by hap doesn't seem to amount to anything special, but it does. The cars play a prominent part in this film, as Mastroianni manufactures car accident protections, and there are several risky car journeys. which eventually must lead to some concern. Also the end is typical of Vittorio de Sica - all has been said, and life will continue anyway whatever happens - even the greatest passions are only episodes, even though they sometimes are marked unforgettable by the circumstances.

Well, at least the furniture's nice...

[NeelyO · 2/10 · 7 October 1998]

One of the biggest disasters ever to be perpetrated by a major film-maker, Vittorio de Sica's "Amanti" ("A Place for Lovers") is a wheezy romance involving Faye Dunaway -- as an ultra-glam fashion designer -- and Marcello Mastroianni -- as a married man who has an affair with Faye, not realizing that she's dying from one of those mysterious Hollywood Starlet terminal diseases. The production design is fabulous, but the acting and the script are not to be believed.

Loved it, lived it

[royale-3 · 12 August 2000]

To be honest, I am a fan of this type of Italian movie and I have been to the Villa in outside of florence where the opening was shot.There is a certain feeling for this type of Late 60's Italian movie that one has to feel good about. I adored the soundtrack and If anyone know of any disk that "Ella" sang that title song, Please let me know

Dull

[atlasmb · 3/10 · 5 October 2020]

With a disjointed story and performances that are nearly devoid of emotion, this film could not hold my interest for more than twenty minutes. If the characters were likable, I might have been drawn into the film, but they are detached and they reveal no motivations. There are so many films more worthy of watching.

A pleasure

[nickrogers1969 · 10/10 · 22 December 2009]

I am so lucky and happy to finally have seen this rare film!!!! It's been released on DVD in Sweden!!!! It's been impossible to see this film. Has it been shown anywhere since its initial release in 1968?

The film was in that infamous book "50 Worst Films" by the Medved brothers. It's not bad at all, quite gripping actually if you like tragic romance on film. It's well made with good direction by de Sica and good acting by Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni.

It IS very much a European film from the 1960's. A bit too trendy for most and that means people will think it is dated. It's a nice document of its time. I do wonder why it wasn't a hit back then, since the film has two big stars and a well known director. Perhaps it's too stilted. I am a great Faye Dunaway fan so for me it was a HUGE pleasure to see this film. I also LOVE films from the sixties high on style.

It's strange that the plot is very similar to the huge hit Love Story from 1970, yet Amanti is completely forgotten. Maybe the story of two jetset people in luxurious environments became a bit tired after a while. The plot is rather thin with very little background explanation. The film also borrows a lot of elements from other films: two beautiful adults in a love affair (A Man and a Woman), a woman seeing shocking news on TV (Persona), beautiful decadent rich people (La Dolce Vita), rich people stealing in a shop (Breakfast at Tiffany's)...

Faye also reminds me of Monica Vitti walking around full of stylish angst in Antonioni movies. (Nothing wrong with that!) She even acts kooky like Vitti in some scenes! It's lovely to see Faye so relaxed on the screen. She seems to be genuinely enjoying herself and is absolutely luminous. Maybe it's because she fell in love with Marcello during filming. She gives a very sensitive performance as Julie.

Beautifully filmed ambiguity of love

[ksundstrom · 8/10 · 19 March 2006]

Italian upper class environment in the 1960's: beautiful houses and interiors, women of course also and so well dressed but, as in Dolce Vita, bored and wont to indulge in ambiguous erotic games - exciting for some and decadent for others. Mastroianni and Dunaway meet in such a venue before the evening festivities begin and fall in love and escape to the mountains at Cortina. The director Vittorio De Sica keeps the film viewer at a distance by introducing a "third party", the breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery. Intense love and imminent death of one of the lovers is not an unusual story. Through the beautiful photography, the cool and tight directing of De Sica, one senses that the dangerous mountains will provide the ending. The acting does not drag you in willy-nilly to experience ardently the emotions but leaves you to decide how you would have acted in such a tragedy. Some might agree with the American critic Maltin who found it pseudo romantic slop, others with a European sensitivity may decide like the lovers or remain ambiguous, but definitely not unmoved by their own thinking and their own feelings.

More than a love story

[rsnunez · 9/10 · 20 December 2002]

This is an excellent movie. To focus only on whether Ms. Dunaway is able or not to "warm" (whatever that means) is pointless. Vittorio DeSicca provides an admirable portrait of late 60s Italy, and more broadly of the kind of moral tensions going on during the late 60s worldwide. Marcelo Mastroianni was playing pretty much himself on the screen, while Faye Dunaway is on the other extreme of her rendition of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, frail, ill, sad. To my mind this movie is a jewel of the Italian masters. The Italian cinema will later overplay these kinds of extreme situations of ailing lovers confronted with an awful fate, as in Anonimo Venezziano, and many others in the early 1970s, but Amanti stands on its own, not only because of the beautiful cinematography (the Alps and Italy at large), but also because of Ms. Dunaway rendition of the character.