The Unknown Woman

Far from the softness Giuseppe Tornatore is known for from Cinema Paradiso, this is a hard film. Irena is Ukrainian, and she has been preparing for a long time to become a servant in a wealthy Italian household. She tries every route, legal and otherwise, gets the job, and works her way toward the family's small daughter, who has a rare neurological condition. Why she is there is withheld; her past enters in fragments, through flashbacks, and those flashbacks rest on human trafficking. Ennio Morricone builds the score on deliberate contradiction. A romantic lullaby theme saturates the film and sits directly beside the brutality of the flashbacks, an old habit of Italian cinema that works uncomfortably well here. It won Best Film at the David di Donatello awards in 2006, with Morricone taking the score prize. Kseniya Rappoport plays Irena, with Michele Placido and Claudia Gerini in support. Who it is for: viewers who like slow-building thrillers that release the past a drop at a time. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot sit through sexual violence. The flashbacks are brief but explicit, and they recur throughout.