White Nights

orne out of both of their emotional desires and frustrations. We also find out just why she waits each night. There are moments of intensity and joy as this story unfolds and we see a love burgeoning. Can it ever result in anything, though? The cold wintery evenings, the snow, the canals - they all add an eerie richness to two potent performances that show the vulnerabilities of their characters, their longings, disappointments and their hopes. Visconti also amiably incorporates a sense of family into the story well too. His being more around the relationship with the loudly omnipresent, but caring, landlady of his hotel (Marcella Rovena) and her's with her ageing grandmother - who rather comically uses a safety pin to adjoin their shirts so she cannot wander off! There is comedy here, but this film also has a sadness to it. Not a melancholic one, more an inevitability that somehow you just know is going to leave one of them quite possibly worse off in the end. Dostoevsky didn't much like "happy" endings - so don't go expecting one here, but there's a delicate chemistry to enjoy between Mastroianni and Schnell.