Due to scenes of gross sexual immorality, cruelty and religiously-motivated violence, MALENA is strongly not recommended Content: The church, too, is mocked in MALENA and there is little redeeming content amid this story of excessive sin and depravity. Even more disturbing, much of the violence is committed under the guise of righteousness and piety. Some of the vile content includes: a boy spits in man’s drink and urinates in woman’s purse children struck repeatedly by father crowd viciously attacks woman in street, ripping clothes from her and kicking her face violent date rape teenager loses virginity at bordello at father’s urging boys compare private parts and, voyeurism.
MALENA contains beautiful scenery and clever fantasy scenes of early Hollywood-type classics, but it is a darkly disturbing, violent, anti-Christian story of gossip, false accusations, sexuality, voyeuristic adolescents, revenge, and tragedy. Ever-watchful Renato does not come to her aid but, nevertheless, learns a valuable lesson about courage.
Malena is leered at by men, reviled by women and eventually suffers greatly for her beauty.
MALENA is the story of Renato, a young boy coming of age in 1940s Sicily, and his fixation on the beautiful war widow Malena.