Plays like a cross between Hitchcock and tabloid feminism, a mix that shouldn't work and doesn't.
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09/19/08
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The Unknown Woman (2008)
61 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 31
Fresh: 19
Rotten:12
Average Rating: 6/10
Consensus: If it's occasionally manipulative, this Italian melodrama mixes thriller conventions with a poignant love story and keeps the tension rolling from start to finish.
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Russian actress Xenia Rappoport gives a rich, complex lead performance in Giuseppe Tornatore's Italian thriller, THE UNKNOWN WOMAN (LA SCONOSCIUTA). Rappoport stars as Irena, a deeply troubled Ukrainian woman who has just arrived in... [More]
Starring: Xenia Rappoport, Michele Placido, Claudia Gerini, Margherita Buy
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Reviews for The Unknown Woman
Writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore ("Cinema Paradiso," "Malèna") reveals a hitherto unknown side of his own with this dark jigsaw puzzle of a mystery.
09/11/08
A spellbinder with a lot of Hitchcock touches and an Ennio Morricone score to match.
08/15/08
Top Critic Giuseppe Tornatore has crafted a film for the ages. With some script assistance from Massimo de Rita, the writer/director is at the top of his game, bringing together a truly mysterious tale of love for family and unbridled revenge in a manner that could
08/07/08
The whole movie hangs on the gradual unraveling of the central mystery and is made with the expectation that the audience is fascinated and hanging on every tidbit. But Tornatore overplays his hand.
07/25/08
Everyday incidents trigger in Irena alternately sweet and horrific memories, and these become like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that is completed only when the film concludes, at last revealing its full meaning.
06/27/08
Top Critic It manages to be brutal, deranged, ridiculous and heart-rending, all at once.
06/27/08
Postures as empathetic while getting its leading lady out of her skivvies -- there's nothing bold about taking a stance against human trafficking
06/27/08
Meet the filmmaker that [Tornatore] is today -- sadomasochistic fantasist, exploiter of women and cheesy Hitchcock imitator.
06/26/08
An exceptionally well-made example of the kind of delirious, semi-Gothic, overcooked melodrama filmmakers from the Boot have long specialized in.
05/30/08
[A] baroquely lurid and undeniably fascinating exercise in pulp with a political angle.
05/30/08
An unstable concoction of political melodrama, film noir, and weepie.
05/30/08
It gets more and more ridiculous and unbelievable as it goes along, and the final scene is shamelessly manipulative.
05/30/08
It's an uneasy mix, and not an entirely successful one. But the film is flat-out gorgeous and contains moments of sheer lunacy.
05/30/08
A riveting lead performance by Rappoport [...] overshadowed by the more frequent potboiler preposterousness.
05/30/08
Just under two hours, sumptuously photographed in noirish shades and slathered in spine-tingling music by Ennio Morricone, it twists every which way to sustain suspense until the final frame.
05/30/08
Top Critic A restless, panicked, devastating emotional roller coaster, meticulously planned and executed like a razor.
05/29/08
Tornatore is unable to sustain tension once the heroine’s agenda is revealed halfway through, and what follows veers between ploddingly dull and unintentionally risible.
05/29/08
There is a mystique in the flow of the opening scenes that are reminiscent of David Lynch's style of filming.
05/28/08
Latest News for The Unknown Woman
September 19, 2008:
OtherCool.com: Wanting it both ways, Tornatore presents the tragedy of sex slavery, while lavishly eroticizing it. And without a clue about female desires or dreams, whether sex slaves, servants or hysterical psychos, beyond their sexual apparatus. 
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May 29, 2008:
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May 18, 2008:
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