The Gift (Il Dono) Movie Review:


In a quiet mountain village, two people, one a young girl and one an old man, make a connection by chance. Her family, who think she’s been possessed, is selling her to men for sex and he becomes obsessed with a photograph he discovers which depicts an extremely graphic sexual scene. The movie shows how the two meet.

Il Dono is set in a place so far removed from our own lives that it could be almost be fifty years ago. The characters rely on their actions to tell the story - there is a wisp of dialogue, which is un-translated, but when the subject material is so bizarre it’s a case of trying to work out if there’s more going on than you think?

It is pleasing to see some really interesting faces, the world-weary, the laughter lines, and to ponder on what sort of experiences created them.
However going on the basis that there is not much more than perceived to this tale, “Il Dono” feels approximately seventy minutes too long (it runs for eighty minutes).

Taking into account the efforts put into composition, the rarely explored themes such as the elderly and virility, also the relationship between sex and religion, even the symbolically capsized boats on the beach…this is still painfully boring.
It’s mainly shot in real time, so if someone starts along a very long path, we can see the person, never in a hurry, making their way across the screen.

The cameras are static too, so yes, it’s like watching someone walk through a painting sometimes. But it’s still like pulling teeth. It’s a positive to watch something a little more challenging than the norm, but this really tests the limits.

Of course, there are people out there who will appreciate this movie, drink in the scenery, absorb all the richness of detail and the subtleties of its beauty, and that’s fine. They probably have their own pet peeves about some movies too. Diversity is a great thing, but it does have to be pointed out that a large percentage of people will get nothing from this film other than sore buttocks.

In one scene, a young boy’s basketball rolls down a hill and hits a wall. A couple of people in the theatre let out a huge guffaw, either ‘getting’ something that the throng didn’t, or ‘telling’ the rest of us ignoramuses when we should laugh. Then it rolled a little more and falls off a cliff…oh the hilarity!

Perhaps it is that the humor is too gentle when put together with scenes of the girl prostituting herself.
There is one lovely composition in which natural light is caught on camera over the village – the way it shifts and changes with the sunlight is very beautiful.

But for a story with sexual theme, it’s ironic that this movie is near impenetrable.

Terresa Gaffney

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