Julia, a fashion designer harboring a secret, spends ten days of passion in the Alps with Valerio, a race car driver, in what will be their last vacation together.
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Title: A Place for Lovers (1968)
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Cast
| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Marcello Mastroianni | ... | Valerio | |
| Faye Dunaway | ... | Julia | |
 |
Enrico Simonetti | ... | Party Host |
| Karin Eugh | ... | Griselda | |
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Esmeralda Ruspoli | ... | Attorney's Wife |
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Caroline Mortimer | ... | Maggie |
| Mirella Pamphili | ... | Party Guest (as Mirella Panfili) | |
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Plot Summary
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Storyline
Julia, a divorced American fashion designer, is dying of a tragic, incurable disease. With only ten days to live, she spends her time vacationing in an Italian villa and watching television. She spots a TV interview with an Italian engineer Valerio, who designs plastic air bags to protect passengers in automobile collisions. She recognizes his face as having met him before at the airport and calls him up to invite him over to her villa where they decide to spend the next several days together, making love. Julia's friend Maggie reappears and reveals that Julia is actually an escapee from the hospital where she was being treated for her disease. Maggie urges Julia to return to the hospital where she can die a painless death. Julia ignores her and returns to the villa and the arms of her lover. Maggie then telephones Valerio and tells him about Julia's condition. Valerio is willing to stay for the duration but Julia is so upset by the fact that her lover knows her secret that she runs ... Written by alfiehitchie
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HEAR ELLA FITZGERALD SING "A PLACE FOR LOVERS" ON MGM/VERVE RECORDS (original poster-all caps) See more »Parents Guide:
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Music by Manuel De Sica
Lyrics by Norman Gimbel
Performed by Ella Fitzgerald
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Trivia
One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell. See more »Soundtracks
A Place For LoversMusic by Manuel De Sica
Lyrics by Norman Gimbel
Performed by Ella Fitzgerald
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Release Date:
22 August 1969 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
A Place for Lovers See more »Company Credits
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... 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. :)