Bread+and+Tulips

I chose to watch an Italian movie entitled “Bread and Tulips,” (Pane e Tulipani) which tells the simplistic story of a suburban housewife, Rosalba, who, while on vacation, goes to the bathroom at a rest stop and unintentionally gets left behind by her family, who failed to notice that she wasn’t on their tour bus. Upset that she’s been forgotten, Rosalba decides to teach her family a lesson by disappearing to Venice for a couple of weeks, without ever contacting her husband or children to let them know where she was. After having hitchhiked to the Northeast of Italy, she decides to check in at a Bed-and-Breakfast and soon finds herself starting to enjoy her new life, as she accepts a job at a local flower shop. Although relishing her prolonged private vacation, Rosalba is conflicted between returning home to her boring life in Pescara, or enjoying her new-found freedom in Venice. Meanwhile, her husband grows increasingly agitated with her desertion, and hires an incompetent and inept detective to track her down.

I wanted to start off by describing the lighting in the movie, which I thought was the most prominent and significant factor that built towards the overall theme and tone in Bread and Tulips. The entire film, which is a light-hearted romantic comedy, makes use of bright lights and bright colors, in order to evidently emphasize its carefree and cheerful nature. I noticed that there was quite a lot of high-key lighting, which is often used to suggest an upbeat mood in movies, and was free from any dark shadows, or pronounced contrasts. The soft lighting and fill lights, the light that filled in the shadows, worked well with the scenery of the film’s location, Venice, because the soft light is not only shadow-less, but it also created this sort of fairy-tale atmosphere, with its bright colors and emphasis on soft reds, pastel blues, and oranges. Also, since the majority of the film took place in public touristic areas, the cinematographer could not have had that much authority on the lighting of every shot. So the movie must have heavily relied on the use of natural lighting, where the sun was used as a backlight. A natural light-source as a backlight will separate the actors from the background and create a nice rim around their heads, with nice even lighting on their face. It also could have made use of reflectors, in order to fill in light or shadows. The second aspect of the film I wanted to cover was its editing. This was not a high-budget movie with sophisticated special effects, but still it managed to incorporate some pretty intriguing shots. What fascinated me the most was the alternations between wide shots or establishing shots, which showed the setting of the scene, and of low-high tilt (camera angle) American shots, which mainly concentrated on the upper half of the characters’ body. I really like American shots because they can offer space to a character, without making them feel lonely, and it can display body language and facial features, which would not be so apparent in a close-up shot or a long shot. In the screenshot I showed above, it displays Rosalba crossing her arms, staring off into the distance. In this scene, she is walking through Venice and visiting the city. You can see that she is enjoying herself, and you can also see the background of the city. Most of the shots throughout the film conform to eye level, making the characters appear neither powerful and/or threatening (from a low angle) or smaller/weaker (from a high angle). Also, since most of the movie's settings were public touristic areas, the director and cinematographer must have worked together to successfully use the Kuleshov effect, like when showing a shot of Rosalba, and then showing a shot of the setting, which implies that Rosalba is in that setting. It's a clever way to depict something, without necessarily having to bring the actors to that specific location, or if that location is unavailable at the moment (which is usually the case with sightseeing places).

Other than that, I noticed that the entire movie followed basic editing rules, including the 30/30 rule, (where a shot that follows another shot should have a difference of no less than 30 degrees) the moving camera (where a moving shot should transition to another moving shot), still shots, (where it’s better to start still and then move the camera) etc.… Although the unique aspect of Bread and Tulips was that it made use of a lot of slow-cutting, which is an uncommon film technique that uses shots of long duration (usually any shot that is longer than fifteen seconds). This forces the viewer to focus more on the scene and on one character, rather than on several different shots and different characters. This added to the overall slow pace of the movie, whose synopsis is rather simple and lacking of action. The simplicity of the shots and of the use of continuity editing were fitting for the genre of the movie: A simple Rom-Com, with a not so sophisticated three-act structure.

Moreover, I thought the sound in the movie, and its music soundtrack, added a lot to the general storyline and to the advancement of important plot elements. The sound throughout the film was mainly diegetic, except for the film score/background music. Although, most of the music in the movie was diegetic, since it was represented as coming from instruments within the story space itself, like when Rosalba is playing the accordion and singing along to it. I think the fact that it was predominantly diegetic made the story more "down to earth," so to speak, and kept it simple and uncomplicated, without another third-person commentary or sound effects added for dramatic effect.</range id="472608610_6">