A Mediterranean Postman (l Postino (DVD))

Name: vhart

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Product:	l Postino (DVD)
Date:	07/11/00 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful cinematography, great acting, great film!

Disadvantages: if you can't be bothered to read subtitles or don't speak Italian!!

Il Postino (The Postman) is a touchingly simple Italian film, which while bearing a classic theme, injects the telling with a poignant tenderness that makes even the reading of subtitles worth it!

Set on a small island, off Sicily in the 1960s, it is the story of Mario, a shy, somewhat awkward fisherman's son whose siblings have all sought better lives in America. Mario takes a job as a postman to Pablo Neruda, played by Phillipe Noiret (who was in Cinema Paradiso and Jean de Florette), the exiled poet who is stigmatised in South America for his political views.

As Mario delivers letters to Neruda, a cautious friendship develops between the two, and Neruda's poetry awakens a poetic streak in the previously quite phlegmatic (well, for an italian!) postman.

This story is played out in Mario's romance with the local publican's (or italian equivalent!)beautiful daughter, Beatrice.

Of course, Neruda's politics, which played a great role in his exile, also reach into the simpler postman's experiences, allowing him to access previously unthought-of worlds and ideas.

The plot isn't particularly complex, but it's telling is restrained but touchingly beautiful, made all the more heart-rending in the knowledge that Massimo Troisi, who plays Mario, was dying as he played this part. Indeed, he died a couple of days after the film was finished.

I would challenge anyone, however hard-hearted, not to shed a tear or two at the end.

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