Il dono (2003)

The state-funded TV channel Yle Teema broadcasts an excellent assortment of foreign, non-Hollywood movies, old & new, rare & famous. I missed the first part of Il dono (because my digital box is fucking up again) directed by Michelangelo Frammartino. It's a shame I didn't see the whole film. There was no dialogue in a traditional sense. The very few words uttered by characters were not translated. Instead, the film comprises long takings of landscape and people doing things. The setting is a rural village. The scenes of the film revolves around an old man, a strange girl and a very old woman. The cinematic language of Il dono is very different from the face-centered, dialogue-driven scheme of commercial movies. The film appeals to the viewer's attention and imagination. There is no story that tells you where to look. The images are in a sense open. Rubble, a car, a person riding a bicycle, hills, the village, houses, a dog. A sudden burst of funereal music. In some scenes, I was confused about what people were doing and I was trying to re-orient my attention.
In one scene, a boy kicks a ball down some stone steps. During the next few minutes, the camera follows the ball's journey down the steps and down the stone path between a few houses. A donkey looks at the ball, surprised. A man passes by. This is a brilliant scene.
In another scene, an old man leaves a mobile phone on a table. It's not his phone. The phone rings. The vibrating phone is reverberating against a table. Close-up of ringing phone, the table cloth.
One scene bothered me. A girl stands by a window, looking out. A man is in the room. Suddenly, the woman unbottons her blouse. The camera focuses on her half-naked body. What separates this scene from the rest is its allegiance to conventional, porno-ish aesthetization of the female body. The girl (a prostitute?) becomes statue-like Body, while the older man shuffles around the room. The woman's body is lit by the light from the window, while the male lurks somewhere in the darkness of the room. The girl is portrayed as inhabiting a world of her own (in other scenes, we see her in an almost catatonic state). What I intend to say is: men are very rarely undressed in this way in movies, and their bodies are rarely aesthetized into frail nakedness. When males are shown naked, the context is usually different.