The Wait (2015)

THE WAIT  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Piero Messina
    Juliette Binoche, Lou de Laâge, Giorgio Colangeli,
    Domenico Diele, Antonio Folletto, Corinna Locasto
This movie begins with a funeral. It's in an old church, and the church looks immense. As mourners shuffle past the coffin, a middle-aged woman stands off to the side, almost in the shadows, not quite watching, not quite there. She wears her face like a mask, but something about her, a faint tremor about her eyes and mouth, tells you she's barely holding it together.   It's not just grief. She's damaged, broken, lost. The woman's name is Anna, and she's played by Juliette Binoche. She lives alone (with a surly caretaker) on an estate in Sicily, and it soon becomes clear (without being stated) that the deceased is her son, Giuseppe. The funeral's barely over when a young woman named Jeanne shows up, Giuseppe's estranged girlfriend, not knowing what's happened and still hoping to patch things up. Anna's too paralyzed to tell her, and that's how they spend most of the movie: one waiting for Giuseppe to appear, the other pretending to. It's hard to imagine anybody in Hollywood making a movie this slow. In fact, it's hard to imagine anybody in Hollywood making a movie like this, period. I'm not sure how well it holds up. Anna definitely looks like she's hiding something, and you start to wonder why Jeanne (Lou de Laâge) doesn't catch on, or at least become more suspicious. Of course, she's in love and a little bit desperate herself. Maybe she doesn't want to know, or doesn't want to admit it. Both characters are on the edge emotionally, and both reach a level of acceptance at the end, or seem to, their conversation not quite finished and the truth never really being told.