Vittorio de Sica's _Two Women_ is mostly about the hardships of war (WWII) on normal people. Sophia Loren is a mother who takes her daughter away from the daily bombings in Rome to her childhood home. She is pretty good as the exasperated mother. Maybe not deserving of an award, but she is good. The other very famous actor in the cast is Jean-Paul Belmondo. Both of these actors could have done a lot better if the script were up to par. Both characters are quite superficially stereotypical, and their big scenes are all over the map. I think that is a good phrase for this film, all over the map. Themes are very weakly held throughout, so it feels meandering. By the end, nothing is accomplished. All I could think of were better films that dealt with similar subjects. This is incredibly unfortunate, seeing that de Sica and his screenwriter Zavattini concocted two of the best films of the 1940s, The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D.
SPOILERS
Those who love the movie are probably wishing to crucify me right now, since I am criticizing a film in which the central episode is a rape. But really, I did not dislike the film before this scene. Although I felt it meandered, I liked it. But when Loren and her daughter are raped, the movie fell apart. Let me say this: just because such a heavy subject is dealt with does not make the movie great. I felt this scene, this plot point, was handled extraordinarily poorly. Instead of seeming horrific, it seemed completely exploitative. After the deed, Loren, certainly a beautiful woman, walks around with her cleavage popping out for the rest of the film. I did not feel that she and her daughter have been destroyed by this incident. Instead, it feels more like an unfortunate thing that happens to them on their journey. The reason for this is that the film ends only about ten minutes later. Since everything before the rape scene had been dealt with more successfully in previous films, I believe the best choice would have been to open the story right before the rape, and have them deal with it afterwards. That way, the gravity of the situation would have hit better.
Just randomly, I watched two films tonight that had to do with rape. This one, and right before it, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. The Virgin Spring hit me like a sledgehammer, whereas Two Women left me squirming with disappointment. The major difference between the two is that The Virgin Spring had a theme, a point. It went somewhere with the horrible event. Two Women just believed it would be powerful because it happened. I may sympathize, but I have little empathy, since I do not know what they felt. 5/10
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