updated: 28/05/2006
While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon, Timoteo, recalls his torrid and violent lust for, and ultimately passionate affair with the deceased Italia (Penélope Cruz): a victim all her life, a charitable act on her part led to her being raped by Timoteo. Italia was an almost destitute, poorly-educated peasant woman from the slums on the periphery of the big city where he lives: almost the antithesis of his glamorous, sophisticated, and succesful wife Elsa. But their relationship continued and moved from the physical to the emotional. Now it is the ghost of Italia who fills his memories as he waits by his daughters bedside.
Penélope Cruz, stopped shaving her legs for an authentic look, and talked about the transformation she underwent for the role:
The character needed that. I mean, that woman has never been to the doctor or the dentist. [She] does her own hair. She has this image of herself and I think that she makes herself look even more ugly because of her own [lack of] self-esteem . . . We did it [the look] together. Me and [Whitney James], the makeup artist and Sergio and his wife who wrote the book. There are four pages in the book that talk about the way she looks and why she looks like that, and her clothes.
Maurizio Silvi and Whitney James were the makeup artists; Mauro Tamagnini was the hairstylist.