Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
The Tourist

After watching this film, it's hard to believe that the director in question bears the long-winded name of Von Donnersmarck. It seems very much like an ad hoc assignment given to an author who gifted us with an extraordinary work, "The Lives of Others", perhaps due to his familiarity with topics like staking out, interception, surveillance... the invasion of privacy.

It's a pity that the work in question, "The Tourist", does not have a gram of the visual and emotional impact of its predecessor.

The plot is the typical story of an ordinary man swept away by fate (femme fatale, tailing by strangers, money of dubious origin...) with the variation that the tourist, indeed... is not an ordinary man.

A woman (Angelina Jolie) closely watched by Interpol needs to meet an international fugitive, her lover, for tax fraud. He has no recognizable face: his face is unknown both to the Russian hitmen "victims" of his theft (and who therefore are hunting him), and to the police themselves. To throw off the investigations, the woman seduces a tourist on a train (Johnny Depp) and takes him with her to Venice. Nothing, of course, is as it seems...

Designed as an interesting fusion of thriller and romantic comedy, with the "exotic" spice (for the Yankee audience) of the Venice setting, the film fully falls into the usual Hollywood clichés and prefabricated situations.

Paradoxically, tension, the raw material of a respectable thriller work, is missing; the pace is in fact suspended between action scenes and romantic or pseudo-romantic moments, where the spotlight is on the Depp/Jolie couple. The film seems designed at the table to pair these two glamour actors, and the result is so contrived that the whole house of cards collapses: we don't grow attached to either of them.

As in almost all her appearances, Jolie remains expressionless from start to finish, sophisticated and cold as an icicle. Depp is too busy playing the faux awkward type, and his self-irony (the fake cigarette, the rooftop run in pajamas) represents the last lifeline of the work.

A side note on the Italian TV faces that make cameos throughout the film (Marcorè, Bova, De Sica). To be avoided.

In short, a classic little film to watch if you want to think about something else, like an escape into the architectural charm of Venice, the true "sensual" element of the film.