A group of Italian semitic and gentile friends gather at the illustrious, Jewish Finzi-Contini estate in the late 1930s playing tennis, romancing, and basking into their idyllic paradise, totally oblivious to the impending fascist threat bearing down upon them. Vittorio de Sico's The Garden of Finzi-Continis, from a novel by Giorgio Bassani, is a beautifully photographed take on an uninvolving and oddly retracted story.
*** out of ****
