From the review by A.O. Scott in The New York Times for March 20, 2015

Review: In Eugène Green’s ‘La Sapienza,’ a Search of Ideals of Civilization

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/movies/review-in-eugene-greens-la-sa pienza-a-search-of-ideals-of-civilization.html

"The characters in “La Sapienza,” Eugène Green’s new film, tend to look directly into the camera when they speak, to speak clearly and grammatically, and to refrain from interrupting one another. The rhythm of the editing is similarly deliberate: The camera looks at one person, then another, and patiently surveys a landscape or the interior of an old and magnificent building. This graceful, unhurried style, with its blend of austerity and artifice and its roots in classical French theatrical traditions, is Mr. Green’s signature. American by birth and ardently European by residence and vocation, he elevates formal decorum to a moral principle. “La Sapienza,” quiet and conversational as it seems, is a passionate defense of — and perhaps also an elegy for — an old and dignified ideal of civilization.

"And also, as such, an escape from the modern world. Though set in the present, “La Sapienza,” which takes its name from a venerable university in Rome, finds inspiration and sustenance in the past, specifically in the 17th century.

"Emotions are held in check: Voices are never raised, and passions are described from a distance rather than expressed overtly...Where, in the 21st-century West, are the sources of enlightenment and wisdom?

"Mr. Green’s response is quietly but unmistakably polemical. His conservatism — rarely articulated outright but implicit in every meticulous frame and carefully wrought sentence — is intriguing and provocative. His films amount to a protest against the vulgarity and velocity of 21st-century life...

"The movie is an unapologetically rarefied undertaking and at the same time a gracious and inviting film."