So many films these days seem to be trying their hardest to be the same, their connect-the-dots three-act narratives all carved from the same stone. Then there's "Venuto al Mondo" (released in English as "Twice Born"), which features a story that flows like a river: shallow here, deep there, a gentle drift until you hit the rapids and it dashes you on the rocks. Predictable it is not.
It starts off with only mild promise, looking like your typical Euro-bourgeois relationship drama: Gemma (Penelope Cruz), a graying married woman with a teenage son from a previous marriage — and believe me, it's a shock to see Cruz looking frumpy — gets a phone call from an old friend in Bosnia, Gojco (Adnan Haskovic). He invites her to come with her son for the photo exhibition of a "friend," whom we soon learn was Diego (Emile Hirsch), Gemma's late husband and love of her life.
Her visit triggers old memories, and in flashback we see Gemma as a young exchange student in then-Yugoslavia for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, where she first meets Gojco and falls for Diego, a freewheeling American photographer. A passionate affair ensues — much to Gojco's chagrin; he also fancies Gemma — but the happiness fades into tension when, once married, Gemma finds she cannot have children, although she desperately wants one.