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Italian star and filmmaker Massimo Troisi was dying of heart failure even before this film, his dream project, began production, and he prevailed upon British director Michael Radford (
White Mischief) to see him and the film through to the end. (The 40-year-old Troisi, a beloved comic actor in Italy, died the day production wrapped.) Based on true events, Troisi plays a shy postman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret). Through Neruda's example and tutelage, the hero learns to think of his Italian fishing village in lyrical terms, as well as how to talk to women and even find the strength to take his political stands. Sweet as it is, the film finally pushes beyond its charming borders to become an even more complex and poignant story about the pain of growing into one's destiny.
--Tom Keogh
Review
Although Michael Radford directed this small, touching film about a shy mail carrier looking for love, the guiding spirit seems to have been writer/actor Massimo Troisi, who died shortly after shooting was completed. Troisi plays a simple, middle-aged man who lives on a small island in the Mediterranean also inhabited by noted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Upon learning that the poet receives a number of letters from women, and is said to have a way with them, he decides to solicit the help of the great man for advice on winning the woman Maria Grazia Cucinotta he loves. The film is as much about the romance of language as of lovers, and as much about the postman's gentle seduction of the initially distant poet as it is about his courtship of the woman. Troisi shines in his final role, his gauntly lyrical presence lingering in the memory long after the film ends. The great Philippe Noiret, the eternal everyman of French films, might have seemed a strange choice for the role of Neruda, but he is as brilliant as ever. A small film it may be, but its poetry is winning. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
