La flor de mi secreto, 1995

Filmmakers might cast a city as a backdrop, or as an essential character in their cinematic narrative. I recall Stockholm as a distant, haunting witness in Ingmar Bergman’s early films, just as Tokyo lingers in the interiors of Yasujiro Ozu’s hypnotic compositions. Or New York, pulsing with unfathomable energy from one frame to the next in Martin Scorsese’s odes to his native city, just as Berlin murmurs its indelible, lyrical soliloquy in Wim Wenders’s films. I can now add Paolo Sorrentino’s mesmerizing paean to Rome, where the protagonist and the city are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate one from the other...[+]