So yes, my past near-obsession (okay, full-on obsession) with Monica Bellucci finally led me to watching Malena. And it’s a damn good movie. Oddly enough, it holds that theme of boyhood obsession quite high, although that got to being too much at points. Ultimately, it’s a sadly telling tale of small towns. Regardless of what the setting is (1940s Italy or 2000s America), gossip is a deadly thing around small town communities and the film perfectly portrays what goes wrong when people think something and it turns out to be something else entirely. Bellucci’s performance was also extremely well done, as she played the beauty part to a tee and yet held that sympathetic nature about her. Beautiful film all around.