I guess, in this case the ruins are the mess that Enzo and Mary made of their lives: Enzo, a criminal who'd been jailed on three different occasions totally 27 years, and his partner, Mary, a drug addicted Transsexual. A prison love story that endured, and after she got out she spent 10 years waiting for him. Now living in poverty and trying to eek out a living, their love is still as strong and just as touching. Sounds interesting. It is, but sadly this material only makes up about a 3rd of the documentary and the rest is padded out with intercut filler: Old film clips, I assume, of Genoa, of people, of the streets, of buildings being demolished, etc. This cinéma-vérité drama / documentary suffers terribly, as does the viewer, from the complete lack of structure.

I went to see this film last night at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I must admit that the only reason I went was that the film is set in the city I was born and where I lived for the first two decades of my life. The story of Mary and Enzo was interesting and could have been very poignant. However, it was engulfed by a messy and incoherent collection of images from a bygone era which made no sense at all and added nothing to the story. It felt like a film student project where the student had been given full access to old footage and went for broke. It was obvious that the film attempted to recreate the poetic atmosphere of a Terence Davies production. In Davies's films all the component work harmoniously together. In this case, all the components fell apart and crushed loudly against the rocky beaches of the Genoese coastline. And sadly, the power of the story of Many and Enzo was weakened by the effort.