Crammed six chairs in front of our new projection screens to see this with K, S, G, F and C. In a way we must have looked a bit like the Cinema Paradiso audience we see in the film, perhaps a bit less overly enthusiastic.
I've had this on my to-watch list for some time (because Morricone made the score, among other things), and it jumped all the way to the top when we decided to travel to Sicily in late May. So when the film came to MUBI France a few days ago, I was delighted.
The plot was good, characters endearing, wow the French actors seem to speak very decent Italian. The score wasn't as good as I expected it to be (because it feels like just the one song?), but that one song is beautiful and, played at the right moments (as it turns out, at many moments), made me feel feelings.
I thought there'd be more Sicily in it and there wasn't really (this could have been any Italian small town, or maybe that's just my uneducated un-italian eye), but the vibe was there and I see how this won over critics and audiences back in the late 1980s.
I really, really want to see the director's cut for this (45 min extra, mostly at the end, answering some of the open-ended plot's questions). I think it's on Amazon?