Between Strangers

Starring:Sophia Loren, Mira Sorvino, Deborah Kara Unger, Pete Postlethwaite, Julian Richings, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Malcolm McDowell, Len Doncheff, Corey Sevier, Dov Tiefenbach, Ngozi Taymah Armatrading, Alex House, Noam Jenkins, Sydney Pearson (II), Andrew Tarbet, Karen Glave, Kathryn Winslow, GÃ©rard Depardieu, Robert Joy, J.C. Kenny
Director: Edoardo Ponti
Studio: First Look Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Description

Olivia is an artist, but recurring dreams pull her toward the daughter she was forced to give up as a young girl, bringing urgency to her work. Natalia has just commanded her first magazine cover as a photojournalist, but an aching to know what happened to the subject of her cover leads her on a new direction in life. Catherine, despite being an accomplished cellist, is consumed with lingering emotional pain. She is wavering unsteadily as she disappears from her family, exacting revenge on the source of her anxiety. As the three women each are visited by the same vision of a young girl, they become inspired to pursue their dreams with a renewed spirit of hope and freedom.

Customer Reviews:

Celebrate woman, don't burn the bra.......2007-05-15

My admiration of Sophia Loren borders on idolatry. Though she will not go down in history as one of our great actresses she was not bad in the movie.
Eduardo Ponti made this movie with his mother in it and it is decisively a success. I loved the subtle play of relationships and experiences that are all too familiar to us. It is a lovely gentle movie in which the characters remains true to themselves and the story line is soft. I appreciate that the movie goer's intellect are not doubted by spelling/blaring/yelling out the plot or clues. We are trusted to pick them up ourselves and interpret them as we wish.
This movie is a true celebration of woman without needing to burn the bra.

Sophia Loren in "Between Strangers".......2005-10-05

I found this to be a very experimental and unusual
concept for a drama. It's always a visual treat to see a
fine performance from Sophia Loren. Her dramatic range
has expanded in her later years, lending pathos to a film
which features frankly depressing subject matter. While
the three protagonists escape their circumstantial and
unfulfilled lives rooted in unhappy relationships with their
fathers or spouses, that escape doesn't occur until the
very very end of the drama, painting the experience in very
gloomy colors. The concept of the three parallel lives is an
interesting one and I wondered throughout if the director,
Edoardo Ponti might be the now adult son of Sophia Loren.
I'm sure he's some relationship to Carlo Ponti. I enjoyed
Between Strangers, but it wasn't thrilling.

Three Women, Sins and Forgiveness: Familiar But Well-Acted .......2005-07-12

Set in modern-day's Toronto, 'Between Strangers' follows the lives of three women loosely connected to each other, played by Sophia Loren, Mira Sorvino, and Deborah Kara Unger. The film's director Edoardo Ponti is the son of Ms. Loren.

Mira Sorvino is a successful journalist Natalia, whose recent photo shot in Angora is nationally praised, and was even used for the cover of Time maganize. But Natalia is still tormented by the sense of guilt, for she thinks she could have done something to the little girl instead of taking photos, even though she was in the war.

Deborah Kara Unger is renowned cellist Catherine, who has run away from her husband and daughter, and keeping herself aloof from others, she is thinking about plans that have something to do with one aged male (Malcolm McDowell) who has just come out of the jail. And Catherine is holding a loaded gun.

And Sophia Loren is a timid housewife Olivia, who works at a grocery store, and is married to John, a grim-faced man in wheelchair (Pete Postleswaite). One day, as you and her friend Max (Gerald Depardieu) will find in the nearby park, Olivia has been seeing in her dreams the dark figures coming out of rocks, and is drawing the pictures of them on paper. Later, as you know, we come to realize the real meaning of them.

The three stories are interwoven deftly, and the characters including the supporting ones are memorable. The acting is unanimously good, but the most impressive is naturally Sophia Loren, who has literally become an ordinary wife. Olivia has buried her own dream in the past, decided to live a stiflingly dismal life with her husband, and is still aware that her life is lacking something vital, and as the other two women do, she finally finds what to do in the end.

Sadly, however, the ingredients themselves in this film -- like journalist's ethics, troubled relations with father, or anything else -- are all nothing new to me, and though the script about sins and forgiveness is well-crafted, and eveything goes smooth and fits in the right place, I for one needed something more, something unique.

Maybe I have complaints about the film because I have seen films like 'Short Cuts' or 'Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.' But Sophia Loren is another story, and her acting alone can make this film worth your money and time.

Fate's intersections!.......2005-02-13

Three stories leaded by women. Three solvent actresses will make the best she can to solve her ethical and problems. Three different occupations: the devoted wife and her invalid husband, the winner photographer of the year and a cellist who faces a brutal drama familiar will fight against her fears, disappointments and disillusions with conviction, honesty following her respective bliss.

It's remarkable to underline the smart device of the phantom girl who appears in dramatic moments was used previously by Kieslowski in his masterwork: Decalogue.
Another important issue: the attack to the old man: Malcom Mc Dowell works out a incisive destiny irony due precisely Mac Dowell thirty three years before in the Clockwork Orange plays a similar role but from the other side of the street when he makes the same against an indigent in the park with his fellow friends.

The presence of Klaus Maria Bandauer and Gerard Depardieu add this artwork film another quality seal . Mira Sorvino makes a convincing role as the winner who suddenly realizes the slender difference between duty and ethic. Loren displays all her experience in a devastating revelation

Touching direction. A mature film!

incredible movie.......2004-05-02

"Between Strangers" was an incredibly moving film, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to see it.

Some people may not enjoy it because there is not an obviously to it, no real action. However, the stories of the three women that unfold are sad and dramatic and very touching. All the actors are incredible, from Sofia Loren down to Wendy Crewson.

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