''Between Strangers'' is a 2002 film written and directed by Edoardo Ponti. It stars an ensemble cast including Sophia Loren,

Mira Sorvino Mira Katherine Sorvino (; born September 28, 1967) is an American actress. She won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's '' Mighty Aphrodite'' (1995). She also starred in the films ...

Deborah Kara Unger Deborah Kara Unger (born 12 May 1966) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her roles in the films '' Highlander III: The Sorcerer'' (1994), ''Crash'' (1996), '' The Game'' (1997), '' Payback'' (1999), '' The Hurricane'' (1999), ''White Noise ...

Pete Postlethwaite Peter William Postlethwaite, (7 February 1946 – 2 January 2011) was an English character actor. After minor television appearances, including in '' The Professionals'', his first major success arose through the British autobiographical fil ...

Klaus Maria Brandauer Klaus Maria Brandauer (; born Klaus Georg Steng; 22 June 1943) is an Austrian actor and director. He is also a professor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Brandauer is known internationally for his roles in ''The Russia House'' (1990), ''Mephisto'' ...

, and

Malcolm McDowell Malcolm McDowell (born Malcolm John Taylor; 13 June 1943) is a British actor, producer, and television presenter. He is best known for portraying Alex DeLarge in ''A Clockwork Orange.'' He was born in the Horsforth suburb of Leeds and raised i ...

. It premiered at the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...

and received a limited release on October 4, 2002.

Plot

Three women in Toronto confront emotional crises regarding the men in their lives. Olivia looks after her husband John, a wheelchair user. Olivia has aspired to a career as an artist, but John believes she is wasting her time. Olivia finds encouragement from an unlikely source, Max, an eccentric French gardener. Olivia also harbors a secret about a daughter she gave up for adoption back in Italy; her anxieties about this secret are manifest in her drawings. Natalia is a news photographer who, on assignment in

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, took a portrait of a crying child orphaned by war. Her father Alexander, also a well-known photojournalist, is proud of Natalia when her photo appears on the cover of a news magazine, but she is haunted by the fact that while she made the child famous, she couldn't save her life. Catherine is a world-famous cello player from New York who has come to Toronto to record an album. She has never been able to resolve her relationship with her father, Alan, who beat her mother to death when she was a child. When Alan is released from prison, she's willing to abandon her husband, children and career as a musician to track him down and kill him, unable to accept that he's a changed man.

Cast

Production

''Between Strangers'' was filmed in the summer of 2001 at Edwards Gardens and the

R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is both a crucial piece of infrastructure and an architecturally acclaimed historic building named after the longtime commissioner of Toronto's public works Roland Caldwell Harris ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Critical reception

Liam Lacey of ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' wrote, "''Between Strangers'' has a few things going for it: Loren's wonderful face, for example, which suggests a wild natural landscape rather than mere flesh and bone, and makes an intriguing contrast with Unger's symmetrical features and turned-to-stone stare. Moment by moment, too, the acting is solid, but the supporting characters are barely sketched in, and script is too schematic and earnest to hold interest. By the time each woman confronts the middle-aged man who has exerted tyranny over her life, you are weary of this suffocating Euro-angst."

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Between Strangers 2002 films 2002 drama films 2002 independent films Canadian drama films Italian drama films Films set in Toronto Films about father–daughter relationships English-language Canadian films English-language Italian films Films scored by Zbigniew Preisner 2000s English-language films 2000s Canadian films