Karlovy Vary 2010: Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Double Hour

Giuseppe Capotondi is a still photographer, a music-video and commercials director from Italy, with The Double Hour he is announcing himself as a filmmaker to watch out for. A triple winner at the Venice Film Festival, it’s difficult to describe a film that changes the rules and twists the narrative inside out every fifteen minutes. This starts out with a young chambermaid who meets a former policeman in a speed dating session. They fall for each other, and romance blossoms, until…Can’t tell you more than that. And it’s not just the surprising twists. Every twist brings along an alteration of the film’s aesthetic. This commences as a romantic drama, continues as a suspense thriller, and then turns into a horror film, but the biggest surprise – is that everything is directed in a calm and confident way, as if Capotondi was a filmmaking veteran. With fine performance from the film’s leads in
Filippo Timi, (an exact look alike, and sound alike, of Javier Bardem) and Kseniya Rappoport, this will be a filmmaker worth keeping tabs on for the future.