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Since his otherworldly 1997 feature debut, Hamam, Turkish-born Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek has driven those T.S. Eliot hobbyhorses of memory and desire into the ground. His new film opens with a masterful transition evoking the former: in 1943, Rome, two brawny bakers battle to the death with a bread knife. The victor flees, comes to a crossroads, chooses one direction, and leaves a bloody palm print on the wall. The print fades and it’s the same corner, present day, as harried housewife Giovanna (an outstanding Giovanna Mezzogiorno) squabbles with her husband. She’s fed up supporting the family as an accountant in a chicken factory and has lately taken to mooning over the hunky stranger in the apartment across the way whom she can see through the windows of the title. When hubby insists on bringing home an amnesiac, elderly stranger (the late Massimo Girotti, bringing grace to the role) with a number tattoo’d on his arm, at first she’s exasperated. But as the visitor’s search for his past begins to coincide with her quest for fulfillment . . . Well, it might have sounded like a good idea, but the execution, except for the performances, is schematic and gimmicky and the resolution (a table full of pastries?) is passionless and forgettable. In Italian with English subtitles. (106 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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