Starring: Gina Piersanti, Ronen Rubinstein, Giovanna Salimeni.
It Felt Like Love, tells the story of a teenage girl who tries to conduct a sexual relationships with an older boy over summer.
This film was a weird one for me. On one hand I was in love with the cinematography and shooting and on the other the I didn't feel like the narrative did the film justice.
The story was unique to see, as a lot of teenage films don't focus on the aspect of a relationships that don't really lead anywhere. It's hard to explain but it was very realistic to relationships that most girls go through, especially over summer.
The concept of the film was great and I'm torn whether I like the execution of it or not. I very much liked the stillness of the film and the mundane reality of the experiences and also how you could see the passion that the protagonist felt without it giving too much.
The cinematography in this film was something that definitely stood out to me. Everything was in a pale blue hue with pops of colour every now and again. Just like the stillness in the narrative, the shots were equally as still. They were very slow paced and this worked perfectly when capturing emotions from the characters. The whole cinematography reminded me of the song by The Strokes - I'll Try Anything Once, as it had the hazey and dream-like feel that the song contains.
The location is something that I also thought was matched greatly with the story. It had both the summer beach for the day, where you're just wasting your day but at night there are these grimey and hood locations which compliment the route that the protagonist is going down. Once again this all sums up into making the film very realistic and true to teenage summers, or at least the summers that I experienced.
The location is something that I also thought was matched greatly with the story. It had both the summer beach for the day, where you're just wasting your day but at night there are these grimey and hood locations which compliment the route that the protagonist is going down. Once again this all sums up into making the film very realistic and true to teenage summers, or at least the summers that I experienced.
The acting was something I was too fond of. As there was very little narrative, I felt that the actors could have put more into their emotions and personality. I thought they were very boring and mundane to watch and this is definitely something that brought the film down for me. The main boy, Ronen Rubinstein, was one of the actors that I did feel gave a fairly good performance and made his character very real.
Overall, I felt this film definitely had it's downfalls and it was quite difficult to watch as there wasn't much going on a lot of the time but the beautiful cinematography and issue of the film was something that uped the films game. I feel like if you're not still in your teens, you won't fully enjoy or appreciate this film for what it is, due to the immature themes that were so accurate back then.
