Critic Reviews

Finally Dawn brings together a wonderful cast, a compelling story, and stunning artistry to create something magical.

Not a terribly profound film, but delivered with real brio.

Set in Rome’s sprawling Cinecittà studios in their 1950s heyday, Finally Dawn is a rich, shape-shifting fairy tale, an odyssey of empowerment about a vulnerable girl navigating her way through a day and night of enchantments and dangers, using her weakness as a kind of magic shield.

Finally Dawn is uneven, and at 2 hours and 20 minutes indulgently long, but it is also full of texture, wit and a few done-to-perfection set pieces.

Finally Dawn is at its most intriguing as Costanzo entrusts his curly haired, wide-eyed naïf to maneuver the looking glass of Italian versus Hollywood cinema. Hint: Italy comes off more soulful.

Costanzo wants to tell a story set in the past, but he doesn't spend enough time fine-tuning the particulars that make period pieces feel vital rather than stagey. Additionally, at 140 minutes, the film is self-indulgent in length.

I’m not quite sure how this group of actors came together or how any of the ideas coalesce into something that a) makes sense or b) is meant to make us feel anything. It’s impenetrable with no intellect: a true curio in the worst way.

One can sense what Costanzo’s trying to do, but he’s made a fatal miscalculation: Mimosa is not leading lady material, and 140 minutes is far too long to spend pretending otherwise.

Finally Dawn can be commended as a homage to Italian cinema and its effort to cater to an international stage, but it stumbles on its ability to follow through on its promises, leaving us a mesmerizing world that ultimately rings hollow.

The bitter aftertaste of dullness remains in its place, an unforgivable sin within the art form Constanzo seems so set on paying tribute to.