I just watched this Italian film called Primo Amore[2004] about a disturbed man who is obsessed with his new girlfriend’s weight.According to European weight measurements she is about 55 kilos.
The fundamental irony of the movie being that she is already slim.55 kilos is about 122 pounds.He gets her down to 40 kilos.90 pounds.She is(was) a lively and intelligent woman before he gets a hold of her.Afterward she is foggy and silent.Her body is skin and bones and her mind is scattered.Why does she allow this to happen? What flaw in her allows him to control her this way? Because she does go along with the stringent diet he makes for her.At the core of their love affair is the morning weigh-in,a ritual for them that seems to take the place of sex.Or anyway, there seems to be no more sex once he gets her to go along with his starvation diet plans.
Basically she eats nothing and if her weight doesn’t drop fast enough for him he suspects her of secret eating. If her weight does go down he suspects her of tampering with the scale.You begin to realize he will never be satisfied. He is sick.It is obvious that this game can’t go on either she will wake up or starve herself to death.The thing is, why did her need for a boyfriend put her to sleep?
There is a scene in a restaurant at the end of the film that is riveting,she finally rebels against his control over her food intake.Of course films about masochism and obsessive love never end well …no happy endings here.No neat wrap up of the plot either.We are left to wonder what will become of them both but we don’t get to see it.We just have to imagine.
Another aspect of this movie is the absence of any outside intervention.Are Italians just more loathe to interfere than other cultures? Or was that just an edited out plot-twist? His history with women and his past failures at relationships are hinted at but never revealed. Her history also is never revealed.
Relationships that demand the subsumation of self in deference to the other are bound for disaster.In other words, super-size those fries,baby.
Children of Men is out on DVD which makes my writing a review of it or even simply recommending that you rent it kind of useless. I’m assuming anyone with half a brain has already seen it. I won’t review it because by doing so I would have to give information about the movie and I saw it with only the knowledge that in the film no one could have a baby and Clive Owen was starring. Which was basically all that was written on the movie poster.