I didn’t find Stay as You Are (Cosi’ Come Sei) to be anything extraordinary, though it is controversial, but Nastassja Kinski is fantastic and at least the story itself had some compelling elements. Unfortunately the Blu-ray release fails in almost every category with piss poor video/audio and only a trailer. Even if you are a big fan of this film or of Italian cinema, this is not worth the price.
Stay as You Are
(Cosi’ Come Sei)
(1978)
REVIEW NAVIGATION
The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall
Genre(s): Drama, Romance
Cult Epics | NR – 105 min. – $29.95 | May 12, 2015
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MOVIE INFO: Directed by: Alberto Lattuada Writer(s): Paolo Cavara and Enrico Oldoini (story), Enrico Oldoini and Alberto Lattuada (screenplay) Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Nastassja Kinski DISC INFO: Audio: English (LPCM 2.0), Italian (LPCM 2.0) |
** Click Here to Purchase Stay as You Are on Blu-ray from Amazon.com **
THE MOVIE – 2.5/5
Plot Outline: While away on a business trip in Florence, middle-aged Roman architect Giulio Marengo (MARCELLO MASTROIANNI) meets beautiful teenage girl Francesca (NASTASSJA KINSKI) and falls in love with her. Francesca is a student that was taken in by a farmer after her mother, Fosca, died. Giulio’s friend, Lorenzo (FRANCISCO RAHAL), learns of his relationship with Francesca and begins to suspect that she may be his daughter. In fact, according to various gossip, the architect had been the lover of Fosca about a year before the birth of Francesca, and therefore could be her biological father. Shocked by the news, Giulio tries to avoid Francesca in every way, moreover distracted by the fact that his daughter Ilaria is expecting a baby. – Wikipedia.org
SPECIAL FEATURES – 0.5/5
This release comes with a matted slip cover which has a strange, rough texture on the front. The features are very limited with the soundtrack (where you can click through each track) and the trailer (6:37; HD).
VIDEO – 1.5/5
Stay as You Are arrives on Blu-ray for the first time through Cult Epics and frankly, it’s probably one of the worst HD transfers I’ve comes across. It’s apparent no restoration was done as the entire 1080p transfer was littered with dust marks, scratches, splices and other ailments. Colors are at times washed out and the detail levels tend to be murky and I suspect some sharpening was done and I also noticed some artifacting in many scenes.
It should be noted, considering the on-screen title, this transfer appears to be culled from the German source, so they couldn’t even do us the favor of giving the original Italian source.
AUDIO – 2.25/5
The movie comes with both an English dubbed, which was poor, and original Italian LPCM 2.0 tracks and I always go with the original language. It’s not a great sounding track or anything where there were apparent hisses and noise in places but dialogue levels still were decent enough and the celebrated score comes through well enough.
A note about the subtitles, I have no idea who worked on them but it’s some of the worst I’ve come across in my limited experience with foreign titles. There were many spelling errors to the point where in one scene the word “tought” was supposed to be “bought” and instead of “your” for some odd reason it showed “you,r”. It was really bad though it seemed to get better as the film progressed; either that or I just ignored the egregious errors.
OVERALL – 1.5/5
Overall, I didn’t find Stay as You Are (Cosi’ Come Sei) to be anything extraordinary, though it is controversial, but Nastassja Kinski is fantastic and at least the story itself had some compelling elements. Unfortunately the Blu-ray release fails in almost every category with piss poor video/audio and only a trailer. Even if you are a big fan of this film or of Italian cinema, this is not worth the price.
Published: 05/22/2015
Check out some more screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers.