There’s a whiff of early Antonioni to the sunlight-etched, Med-existential backdrop, and the midlife malaise, of this Italian drama in which a French botanist (Bruno Todeschini) and a Pisan costume designer (Alessia Barela) meet on an island off Sicily to organise a wedding. Inevitably, they fall into bed, but agree to end their romance before the nuptials begin.
Trapping them in a locale from which virtually all youngsters have departed, journeyman Swiss director Rolando Colla – with three other writers – gives an entropic yet life-grasping undertow to their emotional wranglings. Occasionally it drifts close to over-indulging Todeschini; thankfully, the actor anchors his character’s bachelor angst with a sullen heaviness and flashes of underlying distress.
Seven Days loses a little of its focus as it approaches the finish line, but hovering desolation stops it from surrendering to Condé Nast smugness. As several radiant underwater sequences suggest, it never loses interest in the depths – or the chill down there.
