“In the world there’s a certain kind of cult, with men and women of all social classes, of all ages and of all religions. It is the insomniacs cult. I’m part of it. For ten years. Those who don’t belong to the cult sometimes tend to say: “If you can’t sleep, you can read, watch TV, study or do something else”. That kind of phrase is deeply annoying to the members of the cult. And the reason is simple. Cause the insomniac has only one obsession: to sleep. “

‘The Consequences of Love’, directed by Paolo Sorrentino in 2004, is an Italian thriller following the story of a middle-aged banker who lives in isolation in a hotel and is forced to work for the mafia.  Toni Servillo plays Titta di Girolamo, a man who has spent ten years estranged from his family. Every so often he delivers suitcases of illegal money to a bank, and when he isn’t doing this, he lives a life of aching routine playing cards, solving a daily chess puzzle and, once a week, taking heroin. When he falls for a hotel worker his precarious existence is fractured and he finds himself on the wrong side of his masters. It’s a tense drama, but the suspense comes mainly from the mystery of di Girolamo’s background. The film moves from painstaking character study to thriller incrementally and, as with Sorrentino other films ‘The Great Beauty’ and ‘Youth’, this is done with a extremely detailed study of the quirks and ticks of the protagonist. To start with di Girolamo seems an unpleasant man, rude to the staff and incapable of communicating with his family, but these flaws become, slowly, revealed as a consequence of his situation. As the film reaches a climax, di Girolamo becomes either a stoic hero, willing to sacrifice himself for a sense of honesty, or a man who thinks he has discovered that love is an illusion and therefore his life has no reason.

Would I recommend it? It doesn’t have the lightness of touch or nostalgic humour of ‘The Great Beauty’, but it is an absorbing thriller and a great character study.