The American | Pacentro — The Table Where the Assassin Almost Tells the Truth

Corbijn called it the most romantic moment in the film, and it happens over a table. Jack takes Clara out of the town where he works, up into the hills, and for the length of one meal he is a man having dinner with a woman rather than an operative managing a risk. Nobody dies. He comes close to saying something true.

The restaurant is in Pacentro, twenty minutes of switchbacks above Sulmona, under the three ruined towers of the Caldora castle. The taverna that lent the scene its room still carries the Caldora name and still cooks the food of these mountains — mutton, hand-cut pasta, the saffron that grows on the Navelli plain to the north. It is a working restaurant, not a film set, and it is booked out on Sundays by Italians who have never seen the movie.

Pacentro is worth the climb on its own account. It is on the official list of the *borghi più belli d'Italia*, a knot of stone lanes on a spur with the Majella standing up behind it, and it empties completely between lunch and five.

Take a table by the window and look out the way Clooney does. The view runs straight down the valley to Sulmona. That is the whole scene in one frame: he can see exactly how far he has come from the job, and exactly how easily anyone could follow.

Photo: Nick 83i via Unsplash (Unsplash licence).