Cruz shows what she can do in 'Don't'
The interestingly overripe art-house potboiler ''Don't Move" is a paranoid male fantasy about cheating, with surface similarities to Hollywood movies like ''Fatal Attraction" and ''Unfaithful." This one's Italian, though, and its attitude toward adultery is more European, less pious, and, ultimately, more bizarrely forgiving toward errant husbands. Fate has many punishments in store for Timoteo, the overconfident surgeon played by actor/director/co-screenwriter Sergio Castellitto, but compared to what happens to his girlfriend, he gets off with a slap on the wrist.
Castellitto is a familiar face in European films (''Mostly Martha," ''Va Savoir"), and for his second turn behind the camera he has adapted a novel by his wife, Margaret Mazzantini, and given himself a plum role as the yuppie doctor drawn to his own dark side. For all that, ''Don't Move" is a showcase for Penelope Cruz, who uglies herself up -- that's a relative statement -- as Italia, the dirt-poor hotel maid with whom Timoteo lurches into a disastrous affair. Cruz has been ill served by magazine covers and American movies (''Sahara" being her latest bowl of chowder), but this film is a reminder of an acting talent that, if not especially broad, is no less genuine.
The film unfolds as a series of flashbacks -- sometimes flashbacks piled atop flashbacks -- within a framing story in which Timoteo's teenage daughter (Elena Perino) lies near death in his hospital after a moped accident. As the surgeon stands vigil and his colleagues try to save the girl, he reflects on whether the tragedy might be karmic payback for past misdeeds.
And misdeeds there are. Stranded in a slum when his Volvo conks out (this never would have happened with an Italian car, the director implies), Timoteo begins his relationship with Italia on a shockingly violent note, and he initially treats her as an escape valve for his worst fantasies of dominance. At home he has a decorous marriage to Elsa (Claudia Gerini), a brittle, ridiculously pretty clothes-horse; clearly Italia represents as earthy an alternative as her name. Then the big lug makes the mistake of falling in love, and the lies and desperation build from there.
For much of its running time, ''Don't Move" is well-made soap with subtitles, but Castellitto keeps cranking up the melodrama and l'amour fou, and after a while you realize he has no idea when to stop. By the time the lovers are having mad animal sex in a grubby back alley during a torrential downpour (it rains a lot in this movie), you may actually be bored. And that takes some doing.
The actor-director, who bears a lupine resemblance to France's Jean Reno, does solid work as a meticulous man having a long and secret nervous breakdown, but Timoteo is holding all the cards, even if he doesn't know it. Cruz is in high slattern mode -- blowsy makeup, crummy teeth, too-tight skirts, ''tacky" hair -- but she gets you to feel for her character and even understand what makes her tick.
In fact, a viewer may come away from ''Don't Move" pitying Italia as much for what the movie does to her as for what life and her lover have done. ''You'll never forgive me," Timoteo tells her after one particularly egregious offense. ''God will never forgive us," she replies. How come no one in these movies ever blames the director?
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
