MALENA

Ever keen to forget their status as the uber-turncoats of Europe (went to war on Germany's side, 1915; changed sides, 1917; went to war on Germany's side, 1940; changed sides, 1943) it's a not-entirely-mysterious fact that Italian fascism is a subject very rarely tackled by Italian cinema, with the notable exception of Fellini's surreal Amacord (1973).

No-one is ever going to mention Malena in the same breath as the aforementioned masterpiece, coming as it does from director Giuseppe Tornatore, the man responsible for the unforgivably cutesy Euro-dross that was Cinema Paradiso. Yet despite its excessive glossiness and occasional hints of shallowness, Malena is a competent and visually pleasing (if overly romanticised) attempt to depict the plight of those left widowed and destitute by Italy's World War II effort.

Filmed in impeccably pretty Mediterranean sunshine, with no expense spared on the costume finery, Mulena stars local beauty Malena (Bellucci) as a war-wife who is lustfully stared at by every single bloke she passes in the picturesque Sicilian town of Castelcuta. Early on, Malena trades heavily on teenage-lust masturbation and flatulence gags for its cheap laughs - but it does become more involving as it passes apace, slowly spinning a subtly affecting yarn about Malena's apparently death-stopping loyalty to her absent husband (until the moment when she starts fucking the Nazis!!)

For all its surface superficiality, Malena is one mightily good-looking slice of cinema, and turns out to paint a stark and deeply unflattering portrait of its smalltown setting. The heroine, while savagely unsympathetic, is no less vile than all those who surround her - and though the film steers a mile clear of anything approaching political commentary, its base disgust at this episode in Italian history rings through loud and clear.