How good is Tilda Swinton's Italian?

I didn't find the dialogue was the problem - this film's intrinsic beauty overcomes every one of its faults anyway. Yet one must admit that the great Tilda Swinton's grasp of the italian language is very poor indeed: her character is supposed to have lived for more than 20 years in Italy, speaking almost exclusively Italian, yet she seems not to have learned any of the fluidity and musicality of this language - I've met a few Eastern Europeans living in Italy and none sounds as stilted as she does, like she's only been talking Italian for a couple of years - which is probably quite admirable considering she wasn't speaking any Italian prior to the making of this film! I was however more puzzled by Diane Fleri's slightly French accent and Marisa Berenson's undefinable but very distinctively foreign accent. It is never quite clear whether Berenson's character is also supposed to be foreign - which actually does make an interesting point: the men in the Recchi family all seem to be marrying foreign (or foreign sounding) women. However the character played by the lovely Diane Fleri is established as very Italian indeed, so what gives? And who cares? After all these are very minor quibbles over a very beautiful film.

I'm Italian too, and Ms Swinton says her lines in a Russian-accented Italian. This is an incredible feat, if it is true that she had just learnt the language. Sometimes the illusion is just perfect.
The fact that her character was supposed to have spent some 20 years in Italy and therefore her Italian should have been better is in my opinion of little relevance--I have a number of foreign friends that have lived in Italy for 20 years and you still can tell that they are Dutch or English.
But it is true that, although visually beautiful and with such a good cast, the screenplay is embarrassing. Take for instance the American-Indian business man: totally fake and not really necessary

I agree with menotti-1.
The words were pronounced correctly, but it wasn't natural. It was robotic.

Then again, she is supposed to be russian who then had to learn italian, so...

I am a native Russian speaker, with serviceable English :) Both Emma and Edo spoke with slight foreign accents, which would be immediately obvious to a native speaker. However, the quality of their Russian dialogues is very (very!) commendable. They'd definitely worked with a native speaker on these dialogues, and did a good job on perfecting believable pronunciation, correct intonation and word stress.

What usually happens with Russian dialogues in non-Russian language films is a disgrace - both grammar and pronunciation. Always made me wonder - with so much money spent on films, why wouldn't they get an actual native speaker to translate dialogues into Russian? Some of them even look like they were translated by a machine)
I hope this answers the above question.

I also speak a little Italian, and I agree with the above mentioned opinion, that after 20 years Emma's accent could have been better. But again, some prefer to retain their original accent, instead of assimilating completely. Probably not Tilda Swinton's fault, she's a great actress)

This is a note at the head of my film list http://www.1000plus.com/bestflix.htm. Subtitles are a mixed blessing that allows us to enjoy a very wide array of cinema without being multilingual. But, they come at a price...

NOTE2: "foreign" refers to the language heard in the film - not necessarily the country of origin. For instance Les Invasions Barbares is a French-language film that takes place in French Canada, and not every Spanish-language film originates from or takes place in Spain, but - more often - involves Mexico or other Latin-American countries. Subtitles in the language of the country of distribution are most often available (although it really helps to be at least somewhat familiar with the language of the film as subtitles are necessarily terse - and sometimes wildly innaccurate; plus, you miss a lot of visuals whilst reading subtitles).

It's easy to tell the difference.

Russian sounds like this: Priviet! Kak dela? Spasiba, horoso. A u vas? Na zdarov'e! Dasvedanya!


Italian sounds like this: Ciao! Come stai? Bene, e tu? Voglio andare alla spiaggia. Cin cin! Arrivederci!

Tante grazie...!!

This was perfectly clear

Oscar
Hablo mejor español :)