generalgeneral-13-754670 This is a film that ticks all the boxes in the genre. There's romance, mystery, laughs and sadness, atmosphere, a very good story, social comment, and great cinematography and acting. Not a wasted moment; everything is right and in the right place. Facing Windows is a pleasure to watch and then reflect on and discuss afterwards. It's always good to have entertainment that is a pleasure per se while offering some more intellectual enjoyment as well. And yet you cannot help feeling that these are ordinary people's unglamorous lives, that this could be me, or someone I know; these could be, or are, my problems too, my uncertainties, my difficult decisions. Özpetek has been a good director from the beginning, but gets better with each film.

uroskin If your culture invents the campest art form (opera) you would think it has little trouble with deviant sex. But no, Italy is hardly known for a fantastically open out of the closet queer culture. To the contrary, gay culture seems to be one of the most closeted I have come across for a country that has been part of the liberal west for a long time. The men may walk arm in arm along the street there, but you cannot presume they are anything else but friends. Last time friends of mine visited Italy they had huge trouble finding any gay clubs or saunas. Do I have to blame that church organization in Rome again for this? In contrast, queer representation in Italian art, be it cinema, literature or the plastic arts, has huge abundance: Fellini, Pasolini, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Versace... But when it comes to day-to-day Italian boys getting it on together, lovingly approved by La Mamma and patronized by La Famiglia, it's a totally different situation from, say, in Spain where the boys can get married and people like Almodovar have made a lifetime film career out of it. We watched a wonderfully romantic Italian film last night called "La Finestra di Fronte", which has a terribly sad gay side story of a young pastry chef who saved a lot of people during the war from deportation but had to sacrifice his secret lover to the Nazi round-up. If you have working gaydar you deduce that his secret hidden love is not heterosexual really soon but it takes almost until the end of the film for this to become explicit. Highly recommended and the totty award goes to Filippo Negri (husband of the film's main character, and doesn't appear enough times shirtless for my liking)

toosweet4u79 Have you ever wondered what your life would look like to a stranger looking in? If you were able to magically remove yourself and look at your "everyday", would there be insight to be had? Many of us allow life to pass us by. We do not demand enough, we do not strive enough, we do not mold what we have to the best of what it could be. This film compels you to question yourself, to appreciate more and not take things for granted, because our todays soon become our tomorrows and we do not want to be left with any regrets and what ifs.The film is very real. I felt engaged, I felt involved, and at the end, I felt serene. This is the calibre of film that film-goers live for.

atabora I found this movie to be well made and meaningful. The acting was fine, but it was the plot that really carried the movie. Occasionally, a movie makes a connection with either a book or a previous movie which is uncanny in its similarity. When I watched Apocalypse Now, the connection was with Heart of Darkness. With Facing Windows, the movie could have been intentionally designed as a sequel to a black and white movie starring Marcello Mastriani as an intellectual homosexual in 1930's Rome. Across the alley was Sophia Loren who played the unloved wife of a fascist who was lonelyand attracted to Mastriani (without knowing his predilection). In the end, Un Giorno Speciale is of course a much more refined film, however, the elderly character in Facing Windows could have easily been based upon what fictionally could have happened to Mastriani's character after his days in fascist Rome. I would highly recommend seeing Un Giorno Speciale either before or after seeing Facing Windows.