Malèna is a 2000 erotic drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore from a story by Luciano Vincenzoni.

On 10 June 1940, in the small Sicilian town of Castelcutò, a teenage boy named Renato experiences three major events: Italy enters World War II; he receives a new bike; and he first sees the beautiful and sensual Malèna, who is the most desired young woman in town.

Rumours grow around her, which she unwisely fuels by allowing an unmarried air force officer to visit her after dark.

Renato decides to be Malèna's protector, asking God and his saints to watch over her and performing little acts of vengeance against her detractors.

Also, the young boy's emotional investment with Malena is never convincing, as she doesn't feel like a three-dimensional person.

[6] David Rooney of Variety wrote, "Considerably scaled down in scope and size from his English-language existential epic, The Legend of 1900, Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena is a beautifully crafted but slight period drama that chronicles a 13-year-old boy's obsession with a small-town siren in World War II Sicily.

Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance to make it a strong contender for arthouse crossover.

But its erotic elements and nostalgic evocation of the same vanished Italy that made international hits of Cinema Paradiso and Il Postino could supply commercial leverage.

Malena is a simpler story, in which a young man grows up transfixed by a woman and essentially marries himself to the idea of her.

It doesn't help that the movie's action grows steadily gloomier, leading to a public humiliation that seems wildly out of scale with what has gone before and to an ending that is intended to move us much more deeply, alas, than it can.