First Love

First Love (Primo amore, 2004) is an Italian psychological drama from Matteo Garrone, ready to watch online on iFILM. Goldsmith Vittorio places a personal ad looking for his ideal woman and meets Sonia — smart and warm, but, by his measure, far too heavy.

Vittorio shapes gold for a living, and he sets about reshaping Sonia with the same obsession. First a diet, then control over every bite, then over her whole existence. She slides, almost imperceptibly, into being raw material in his hands, and the romance curdles into a shared masochistic game. Once the couple shuts itself away in a house in the Veneto hills, the last thread to reality snaps.

Garrone made this four years before Gomorrah, and his cold, watchful eye is already fully formed — the camera studies the mania without judging or excusing it. Michela Cescon plays Sonia in a way that's genuinely hard to sit through. A bleak film about power, hunger and a love indistinguishable from torture; save it for when you can take it. Stream First Love (2004) online on iFILM.