‘Dovecote’ Delivers a Sensory, Emotional Journey

It took me a while to process my feelings on Marco Perego’s humane and personal but fantastical journey in his live action film, Dovecote. This is a film that you feel without realizing that your brain is processing it. Eventually, your heart catches up with your head in a hurried pace, and Perego has tapped into something quite beautiful when it comes to accepting a new path and new directions. I imagine this experience will differ greatly from viewer to viewer.

Perego opens his film in the wee hours of the morning in an Italian canal. I kept wondering how late our gondolier has been working, and our watery pathway turns the corner to emerging lights and breathtaking sights. Once we park, we float upwards and inwards into a nearby building, its stucco walls peeling. Once inside, Perego drains the color from the screen.

Zoe Saldana plays a nameless woman as she arises on what appears to be her final day in a women’s prison. She walks through and is generous with people–she delivers toilet paper and exchanges sweaters. We prance mostly behind her as Perego never lets us stray too far from her stride. Other women eventually flood the screen, their gaze as equally transfixing, and we realize that this director holds respect and weight for each one of these people. This is a world away from prying eyes, one that we must pass by every day and not give if enough consideration.

Perego’s film is an entirely sensory experience. I could smell the canals and feel the fabric on the wide knit sweater that Saldana takes for herself. Gorgeous music plays, especially through the second half, but it never becomes too overwhelming. This director has balanced everything so well that nothing feels like it overtakes the other. Saldana has always been a performer whose face can devastate with the flick of an eyebrow or quiver of her cheek. When a toughness is stripped from her or she allows it to fall away, a vulnerability comes cascading through those eyes.

There is a universality that Perego introduces to us. It’s inviting and scary, because his lead character is entering a tumultuous moment in her life. Will she meet the moment? Will she let us follow in her wake?