La sapienza

At the height of his career, Alexandre decides to set off for Italy with the idea of completing his draft – interrupted years earlier – of a book on Italian architect Borromini. He is accompanied by his wife Aliénor who feels her relationship with her husband gradually slipping away along with the passion it used to inspire. Having reached Stresa they happen to meet Goffredo and Lavinia, a couple of siblings who live there: the former is about to embark in architectural studies, the latter is suffering from a nervous disorder.
Bathed in Italian light and often breathtakingly beautiful in its sweeping panoramic shots and disembodied architectural observations, LA SAPIENZA makes brilliant use of the filmmaker’s signature shot/countershot pattern, wherein characters look deeply into each other’s eyes and declaim with anachronistically impeccable diction. Following in an august lineage of materialist films that search for the immaterial, Eugène Green’s latest film makes a passionate plea not only for the preservation of history, but for the rekindling of human affection and interaction in a world grown cold. (Andréa Picard)

In the presence of Eugène Green.