La Solitudine Dei Numeri Primi (The Solitude of Prime Numbers)

[pro-bassoonist]

Saverio Costanzo's La Solitudine Dei Numeri Primi a.k.a The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2010) has received a preliminary release date: February 9. Screened at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. Courtesy of Medusa Film.

David Nussair

Based on a novel by Paulo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers follows a pair of off-kilter loners (Luca Marinelli's Mattia and Alba Rohrwacher's Alice) from their respective childhoods through to their expectedly rocky adult years. It's clear right from the get-go that The Solitude of Prime Numbers, for those viewers that haven't read the book, does require a considerable amount of patience, as the decision to move backwards and forwards through time results in an atmosphere that can be quite confusing (ie it's initially impossible to figure out both the identity of the various characters and also the context of their actions). Even during its more overtly baffling stretches, however, The Solitude of Prime Number benefits substantially from filmmaker Saverio Constanzo's exacting, often exhilarating visuals - as the director has infused a number of the film's sequences with an almost Kubrickian flair that proves utterly hypnotic. As the movie progresses, however, the various pieces start to fall into place and one is slowly drawn into the decidedly low-key exploits of the two admittedly striking central characters - yet it's just as clear that the movie suffers from an almost aggressively uneventful final third that does, to a certain extent, deflate much of the energy out of the proceedings. In the end, The Solitude of Prime Numbers basically comes off as a subdued drama that's been placed within the context of an impressively epic framework, and it does seem entirely likely that the film would be benefit substantially from repeat viewings (ie the wild shifts in tone might not seem so jarring once you're aware of where everything is going).

Pro-B