Product Description

Olivia is an artist, but recurring dreams pull her toward the daughter she was forced to give up as a young girl, bringing urgency to her work. Natalia has just commanded her first magazine cover as a photojournalist, but an aching to know what happened to the subject of her cover leads her on a new direction in life. Catherine, despite being an accomplished cellist, is consumed with lingering emotional pain. She is wavering unsteadily as she disappears from her family, exacting revenge on the source of her anxiety. As the three women each are visited by the same vision of a young girl, they become inspired to pursue their dreams with a renewed spirit of hope and freedom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57521 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-13
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Customer Reviews

Adagio for Three Women
BETWEEN FRIENDS is a tough story told with unrelieved intensity, acted with underplayed angst, and directed with quiet strength by Eduardo Ponti. The "Strangers" are three unrelated women, each of whom has a burden that grows until it must be lifted.

Mira Sorvino is a media photographer, daughter of Klaus Maria Brandauer (who has multiple awards for his own news photography, who has just had one of her images appear on TIME magazine - an image of a little girl from Angola who we gradually learn died in the fire Mira was photographing. She is haunted by the fact that the time she spent photographing the child could have been used to save the child's life.

Deborah Unger is a concert cellist whose wife-abusing father (Malcolm McDowell) is released from prison despite her conviction that he should die for his cruelty, forcing her to leave her own family in the attempt to end her father's existence.

Sophia Loren is a haggard housewife who has devoted her sad life to caring for her wheelchair-bound past athlete husband (Pete Postlethwaite) until she sees her illegitimate daughter she was forced to abandon becoming the sculptor artist she herself always wanted to be. Each of these women have visions of the same small girl at moments when they are forced to confront their pain and each finds a way back to salvation through 'living out a dream'.

Some may find the story saccharine, but the actors deliver these sad folk in such an honest way that together they manage to capture our hearts. It is a true pleasure to see Sophia Loren act again and even the makeup she dons for her dowdy role cannot hide the fact that she remains one of the most beautiful women the screen has known - and one of the best actresses. All cast members are superb. Just be aware of the fact that this is a bleak story that requires much from the viewer. The rewards are worth it.

Fate's intersections!
Three stories leaded by women. Three solvent actresses will make the best she can to solve her ethical and problems. Three different occupations: the devoted wife and her invalid husband, the winner photographer of the year and a cellist who faces a brutal drama familiar will fight against her fears, disappointments and disillusions with conviction, honesty following her respective bliss.

It's remarkable to underline the smart device of the phantom girl who appears in dramatic moments was used previously by Kieslowski in his masterwork: Decalogue.
Another important issue: the attack to the old man: Malcom Mc Dowell works out a incisive destiny irony due precisely Mac Dowell thirty three years before in the Clockwork Orange plays a similar role but from the other side of the street when he makes the same against an indigent in the park with his fellow friends.

The presence of Klaus Maria Bandauer and Gerard Depardieu add this artwork film another quality seal . Mira Sorvino makes a convincing role as the winner who suddenly realizes the slender difference between duty and ethic. Loren displays all her experience in a devastating revelation

Touching direction. A mature film!

Sophia Loren in "Between Strangers"
I found this to be a very experimental and unusual
concept for a drama. It's always a visual treat to see a
fine performance from Sophia Loren. Her dramatic range
has expanded in her later years, lending pathos to a film
which features frankly depressing subject matter. While
the three protagonists escape their circumstantial and
unfulfilled lives rooted in unhappy relationships with their
fathers or spouses, that escape doesn't occur until the
very very end of the drama, painting the experience in very
gloomy colors. The concept of the three parallel lives is an
interesting one and I wondered throughout if the director,
Edoardo Ponti might be the now adult son of Sophia Loren.
I'm sure he's some relationship to Carlo Ponti. I enjoyed
Between Strangers, but it wasn't thrilling.