Una Giornata Particolare

"One Particular Day" (1997) by legendary Italian director Ettore Scola starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, tells of an unusal day experienced by a housewife and a homosexual man, who live in the same housing complex and choose not to attend a political gathering on the day Hitler visits their city, Rome. The story starts with a simple and mundane plot with the housewife fixing breakfasts and clothes for her six kids and her husband. Her inner life goes through an enormous change from the moment her bird leaves the cage, forcing her to retrieve it from a neighbor's room.

When she meets this neighbor--a homosexual man played by the charming Marcello Mastroianni--something strange happens. She falls in love, and he becomes very fond of her. In fact, she unknowingly saves him from committing suicide that day. But it is not after much tension and struggles that they come to terms with their feelings for each other, and then there is acceptance, and union.

Their meeting during that "particular day" has created a big shock within themselves. For her, it is the birth of a desire to break free from the conventional role of a mother and submissive wife that she has been encaged in. For him, it is the expanded identity he has gained through the experience of being intimate with a woman, and most important of all, to be accepted and loved despite the fact that he is gay--something that has cost him his job and dignity in the fascist society he is condemned to live in.

The movie has such a powerful plot and subtle symbolisms, made three-dimensional with the constant radio broadcast of Hitler's meeting with Mossolini, signifying the context of the tragedy embodied by the two atagonists. The acting by these two Italian cinematic stars is world class and the directing by Ettore Scola is just exceptional. Really a masterpiece.