The Consequences of Love

The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell'amore, 2004) is Paolo Sorrentino's hypnotic Italian thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. A quiet man in an expensive suit sits in a hotel room, waiting for something he won't explain.

Titta Di Girolamo has lived in the same Lugano hotel for nearly ten years. He smokes, plays cards, keeps everyone at arm's length, and once a week receives a suitcase full of cash. What he does and who he answers to, nobody knows. Toni Servillo plays him as a man who has deliberately sanded his own life down to a flat grey nothing. Then he starts talking to Sofia, the young woman behind the bar (Olivia Magnani), and one small crack in that built-up emptiness sets loose something he can't pull back.

This is Sorrentino's second feature and his first major collaboration with Servillo, the pairing that would later give us The Great Beauty. Expect cold, mesmerizing direction, slow camera glides set to a trance pulse, and an ending that clamps your jaw shut. It's a film for people who prefer slow poison over loud action. Stream The Consequences of Love (2004) online on iFILM.