La Sapienza

Easily the most astonishing and important movie to emerge from France in quite some time. While its style deserves to be called stunningly original and rapturously beautiful, the film is boldest in its artistic and philosophical implications, which pointedly go against many dominant trends of the last half-century.

The unresolvable tension between logic and feeling animates Eugene Green’s La Sapienza, an exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure.

The pace can feel plodding, but the observations on human frailty and redemption more than make up for it. Despite forays into the head, it's the movie's heart that makes it special.

Talky and cerebral, this theatrical drama juxtaposes space and light and explores ghosts from the past and love in the present.

The movie is an unapologetically rarefied undertaking and at the same time a gracious and inviting film. And it embodies an elegant and melancholy paradox: What looks like tourism is really the pursuit of truth and beauty, and vice versa.

Combining the knowingly arch style of Abbas Kiarostami (whose "Certified Copy" towers over and belittles this film) with the didactically educational passion of your favorite art professor, La Sapienza alternately feels like a self-reflexive love story or a haunted history lesson—its best scenes play like both.

While La Sapienza is unsatisfying as drama, it’s frequently beautiful just as a tour through architecturally significant Italian buildings. And it’s intellectually engaging as an elaboration of their larger meaning.