Mr. Tornatore, who is still best known for the Oscar-winning ''Cinema Paradiso,'' is no Fellini. If his world view falls far short of Fellini's transcendent human carnival, his better films are similarly hot-blooded celebrations of flesh and fantasy infused with a zesty Roman Catholic sense of sin and redemption....As much affection as the director holds for these combustible Sicilian peasants, he recognizes their potential for mob violence and their atavistic sexual code. Their fury at Malena is the flip side of the blind adoration of Mussolini that brought them low and caused the town to be bombed. But in one last, unexpected plot twist, the film turns the tables again to celebrate human resilience and the capacity for forgiveness. Flushed with emotion and a buoyant earthy humor, ''Malena'' is a yarn that sticks with you.

Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena" tells the story of a woman whose life is destroyed because she has the misfortune to be beautiful and have a great butt. The film torturously tries to transform this theme in scenes of comedy, nostalgia and bittersweet regret, but somehow we doubt its sincerity, maybe because the camera lingers so lovingly on the callipygian charms of the actress Monica Bellucci. There is noting quite so awkward as a film that is one thing while it pretends to be another.... "Malena" is a simpler story, in which a young man grows up transfixed by a woman and essentially marries himself to the idea of her. It doesn't help that the movie's action grows steadily gloomier, leading to a public humiliation that seems wildly out of scale with what has gone before and to an ending that is intended to move us much more deeply, alas, than it can.