One central and powerful scene literally involves mirrors, with each woman talking to the reflection of the other. We have similar mirrors throughout the film in terms of cinematic effect. In both cases, the one inverted out is an actress. In each case, the stories are inverted: where the teller is actually the other character in the story: a daughter instead of a mother one twin sister instead of another. Each reveals themselves by telling a story about themselves that has another woman in it. These women are strangers, each with an internal symmetry. While making love, one woman discovers the topography of the other, calling it so, by gentle caresses. The film ends with an act that alters the map in which they sit - setting a flag - visible to the world from a satellite-cupid. This bit of what is called magical realism is triggered early on when there is a point in which one women leaves, the other falls asleep, the camera floats to this cupid and the rest could be a dream - or not. Between on the ceiling is a cupid who literally takes over the reality as the symmetries are knotted.

One is about learning of love and passion and the other about experiencing it. Two paintings in the room matter in the way that Raoul Ruiz often uses. It is gentle, almost invisible, a river carrying us into the story, the room. It is not an ostentatious shot like Welles, dePalma, Anderson and such have done. This map idea is conveyed in the first shot as we have (what is traditionally called) a long tracking shot as we sit in the room 'Rear Window'-wise, walk through the credits, see our characters on the street, watch a seduction and then have them appear in the room while we canvas the paintings and nooks therein. Within the room are paintings that themselves are narrative maps and the camera lingers on one and another as great semiotic maps. They see into the world as we the world look into that tiny hotel room. Microsoft's version of Googlemaps (suitably plugged) provides the maps for how they use the world as the matrix for their discovery. Thereafter, the women in the room have their own theater as they look out on the world. The characters pause as they feel the eyes of the audience upon them. Early we are told that this room in which the entire film occurs is on the site of the ancient Roman theater. This has two explorers who see each other fully, the basis of love Medem raises the experience of their sight into each other to the level of our sight of them. But the real effect is a sensitive discovery of the nature of urge captured by another soul. Commentors will likely focus on the sensuality of some parts of it and the nudity in most. Two women - strangers - meet, fall in love and separate in the course of ten hours or so. The actual plot is the thinnest skeleton, and I understand it is borrowed from another film, the way Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot skeletons. Complex unknowns, urges and liquid needs. This is love as it is in our souls and not as it is in date movies.

And folks, the engagement is full of tension, ambiguity, fear. Every one contributes to a great upswelling of emotional engagement. This is film packed with cinematic and narrative devices, and every one works with the others.

In his structural experiments in prior films he has sometimes been deft but the folding is obvious and does not support the emotional delivery that it should. He also - so far - has found it useful to place women as the fulcrum of his films. He is all about narrative structure and adventures in folding beyond the norm. I do not expect everything he does to change my life, but I know he will never fail to enrich in some way. +++ Medem is to my mind one of the three greatest living filmmakers. The structure should not be apparent to you before you see it though, because the way you discover this and its mysteries, mirrors the way the two people here discover each other and themselves. The comment below talks about structure, as my comments usually do. Folks, there is a spoiler alert on this comment and I urge you to take it seriously.

A room in rome full movie