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Beyond Love (Italian)

A story about four friends - one lesbian couple and the other gay couple and what happens on this lives over the course of a period. The concept of the film was good and was done very simply, but the acting was somewhere just average and at places the reactions felt awkward and weird and just out of place. The film is unnecessarily stretched and could easily be shortened. 

Marina and Anna are a lesbian couple celebrating ten years of togetherness. Marina's best friend is Stephan, who has been with Tony for about the same amount of time. The lesbian couple wants to have a baby but disagree on who should be the mother, which starts various rifts between them. Marina asks Stephan for his seed, but he is not ready for it. He suggests artificial insemination but Marina doesn't that that kind of money. To help her with money, Stephan starts to trick and sell himself. When Tony finds out, he is heart broken and leaves him. When Marina hears about this, she realizes that unconsciously she pushed Stephan into doing this and brings back the two men together. But somewhere along this time, one night Marina and Stephan end up having sex and she gets pregnant. Both the partners Anna and Tony feel completely betrayed and leave their respective partners. Stephan is with Marina taking care of her till the delivery time. Towards the end Tony and Anna realize that they do want to be part of the baby's life and hence they all decide to come together. 

The film is shown through flashbacks while all the people are waiting in the hospital for delivery to happen. Of course we don't find out until much later why they are in the hospital. We have seen many films about gay couples trying different ideas for a baby, but here Stephan taking up prostitution to collect money for his best friend was something new. But at the same time, what I didn't like was how can a ten year together couple fight over who's going to be the mother. Its like they had no chemistry and have been together barely a few months. In contrast Tony and Stephan were better together but both the couples had major communication issues. Its like they never talk and confide in each other and discuss their problems. Also both Anna and Tony are like home makers with no income, and I wonder if that was on purpose to show their weak side in the whole scheme of things. Stephan was the better actor of the four and Anna was the worst. Tony and Marina did what was expected of them. Overall, strictly the film was just ok. Wasn't bad and definitely not good enough to go around recommending to people. Probably made with minimal actors and shoe string budget, this is something to watch is the subject interests you. (5/10)

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