Dormant Beauty

Dormant Beauty

Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Starring Toni Servillo and Isabelle Huppert
Distributor: Emerging Pictures
Eluana Englaro becomes a national tragedy in Italy when the decision is taken to put an end to her life after seventeen years of vegetative state.
This drama will affect the lives of four characters having their own beliefs. A senator, struggling to vote a law with which he profoundly disagrees, is torn between his conscience and his loyalty towards the leaders of his party. His daughter, a pro-life activist, while demonstrating in front of Eluana’s clinic falls in love with Roberto, who is with his brother in the opposite group, advocating secular values.
A famous actress turns towards faith and miracle cures in hope of bringing her daughter out of an irreversible coma, thus neglecting her son who longs for his mother’s love. And the beautiful Rossa, lost in despair and determined to die, is saved by the young doctor Pallido and reawakens to life.
These converging stories are connected by a unique emotional thread: a reflection on the meaning of life.
2012 Venice International Film Festival
2012 Toronto International Film Festival
2013 Los Angeles Film Festival

“Persuasive, delicately textured… Don’t let this one slip through your fingers.” – Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice

FOUR STARS “[A] tough, poignant drama … with an overarching humanism that gives equal weight to the many feelings stirred up by this hot-button situation.” – Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

Dormant Beauty recalls the kind of film the great Robert Altman might be making if he were still alive. The best political film of the era…Bellocchio proves that cinema is still alive.” Armond White, National Review