Sofia’s review published on Letterboxd:
Visconti strings together a drama confined to the rooms of an aristocrat's palazzo in Rome, weaving together the story of a solitary, reclusive man, disturbed and dishevelled by an unanticipated intrusion. This retired professor inhabits a solitary existence, one of boundless luxury and wealth, of silence and intellect, embodying the decadence of the aristocracy, representing their idealistic lapse into oblivion. Crows crowd in flocks, the eagle soars alone.
It is the invasion of an anarchic, extravagant family that wrenches him out of his blissful solitude. The professor’s languid routines are dislocated, his serenity shattered and the interactions lead to a clash of cultural values, social and generational perspectives in a deconstruction of the bourgeoisie. We are confined to internal spaces, restricted in a claustrophobic environment in which characters operate on a dynamic of competition and radical self-interest.
Though within this, something emerges, something that teases tentatively at the long endured solitude that this retired aristocrat has claimed to cherish so ardently. You’ve awakened me from a sleep as profound, as insensitive, and as deathly as death itself. Somewhere, a bond has formed and the tragedy that unfolds by the end only heightens the misery he would then endure having begrudgingly formed some emotional connection. The price of progress is destruction.