Ferzan Özpetek has been criticized for producing work that is old-fashioned and middlebrow and whose apparent hybridity results from international casting rather than any sustained attempt to investigate new forms of subjectivity. The aim of this article is to look at Özpetek's Le fate ignoranti (2001) as a film that explores multiple levels of difference and cohabitation between formations of sexuality and national or ethnic identity. The article suggests that there are ways of looking at Le fate ignoranti and of understanding the reception of Özpetek's work in Italy that show him to be revising familiar cinematic forms and identity formations rather than reiterating them.