Full Review

"Days and Clouds" ("Giorni e Nuvole") (Film Movement) is a mature, generally perceptive Italian-Swiss drama about the effects of sudden economic insecurity on marriage and family life.

The day after his art restorer wife Elsa (Margherita Buy) passes an important graduate exam, middle-age Genoese executive Michele (Antonio Albanese) breaks some grim news he's been withholding so as not to distract her: he's been unemployed for two months. Resistant to changes that would have disadvantaged his workers, idealistic Michele had been forced out of the company he founded by his more ruthless partners.
 
As the implications of this challenging situation unfold -- the couple put their home up for sale, eventually moving into a much less desirable apartment -- Elsa becomes energized, Michele enervated.

Although she loves her unsalaried restoration work, Elsa temporarily relinquishes it in favor of two part-time, but paying, jobs. Unable to secure a position that lives up to his qualifications, white-collar Michele tries to become a courier, then a construction worker, taking care of household chores in between. But, despite his initial optimism and bravado, he grows ever more resentful of Elsa and ever more depressed by his own fate.

Elsa, meanwhile, who had upbraided Michele for keeping her in the dark, nonetheless joins him in concealing their new circumstances from their social circle and even, for a time, from their 20-year-old daughter Alice (Alba Rohrwacher).

Director and co-writer (with Doriana Leondeff, Francisco Piccolo and Frederica Pontremoli) Silvio Soldini's intimate, award-winning portrait of a marriage under siege upholds the value of long-term mutual commitment. Yet, reflecting a misguided sense of sophistication often identified with Western Europe, the script downplays the devastating consequences of physical infidelity.

Although the only hint of a religious presence within the film's secularized milieu comes from the faded ceiling mural of the Annunciation that Elsa and her colleagues devotedly tend -- so that the only spiritual resource she and Michele have to draw on is that of common human decency -- the delicate labor of recovery and re-revelation progresses throughout.

These movies have been evaluated for artistic merit and moral suitability by the media reviewing division of Catholic News Service. The reviews include the CNS rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

A-I -- general patronage;
A-II -- adults and adolescents;
A-III -- adults;
L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
O -- morally offensive.

Note: Some movies previously were designated A-IV. Older films with this classification should be regarded as classified L.