‘Do you know how I felt when I found my son’s corpse with his tongue hanging out?’
During the Second World War in Italy, a young teenage girl ends up running a small, rural hotel when her mother dies in an accident. However, events spiral out of control and lead to murder…
Striking, period-set borderline Giallo from director Francesco Barilli. This Italian-Spanish production stars Leonora Fani, Luc Merenda and Francisco Rabal.
World War II rages in Europe, but life seems quiet in the coastal hotel run by Marta (Lidia Biondi) and her teenage daughter, Rosa (Fani). However, Fani is deeply unhappy, missing her father, who is away fighting as a pilot. Worse still, the male guests can’t keep their hands off her, even though she’s barely of age. Creepy gigolo Rodolfo (Merenda) is particularly persistent, as he’s tired of his older lover (Joel Fierro) and plans to steal her diamonds and leave. Grieving widower Josè María Prada is also obsessed with Fani, and resident playboy Luigi De Santis also fancies a change-up from his two live-in prostitutes. If that wasn’t enough to cope with, her mother is also keeping a lover (Rabal) hidden in the attic from the authorities.
Things start to unravel when Biondi falls down the stairs one night and breaks her neck. It’s nothing more than a tragic accident, but it leaves Fani with no choice but to take on running the hotel, helped only by drunken waiter Alfredo (Arnaldo Caivano). Without her mother’s protection and authority, the behaviour of the guests deteriorates further, and Merenda becomes even more determined to sleep with her. Two thugs (Carlo Totti and Wolfgango Soldati) arrive as unwanted guests, soon revealing themselves as confederates of the duplicitous gigolo. Fani discovers their plot, and as a storm rages, violent passions are unleashed.
Several Giallo commentators do not consider Barilli’s film worthy of inclusion in the field, and that’s not too surprising. This is most definitely not a mystery thriller or a horror movie. Instead, this is a meditation on human nature and the thin veneer of civilisation. Although the hotel is not entirely isolated, the drama playing out elsewhere on the world stage leaves the inhabitants much to their own devices. When Biondi dies, the gloves come off, with the guests embracing greed, wine and sex without restraint or moral considerations. The situation does escalate into murder, and the body count ends up being quite significant, but it all happens in the last act. Similarly, the mystery element is dismissed almost as soon as it arrives and feels redundant.
Standing against the onslaught of bad behaviour and rising decadence is the fragile Fani, desperate to hold onto her virtue and maintain the disintegrating social structure, and her struggle remains engrossing throughout. The script by Barilli, in collaboration with four other writers, creates a nuanced and convincing microcosm of the world without resorting to broad or obvious contrivances. Even better, Fani nails the difficult mixture of adolescent vulnerability, shock, bewilderment, and eventual withdrawal with consummate skill. When things finally fall apart in the most horrible way imaginable, you can feel her die inside and emotionally disconnect. Her maturity as an actress isn’t so surprising when you realise that she was 24 years of age at the time of shooting (she looks much younger), and she had more than a dozen featured movie roles under her belt.
Strong support comes from the oily Merenda, who displays an easy, flirtatious arrogance that barely masks the violence that lies within. It’s a departure from the more action-orientated roles that were his more familiar repertoire. Other roles are less showy, but all the cast hit the right notes. The pathetic Prada who can’t stop talking about his dead wife and son, Biondi trying to raise her daughter in trying circumstances, and ageing socialite Fierro driven to extremes to hold onto her young lover. Even the minor roles are afforded care and attention by the scriptwriters, and the ensemble responds accordingly.
The film’s other central virtue lies in its technical accomplishments. The lighting and the cinematography of Gualtiero Manozzi are exquisite, with the hotel’s gloomy interiors splashed here and there with patches of bright, vivid colour that create an often stunning ambience. Outside is a world of pastel beauty, the countryside idyll of landscape painters and romantic poets, all the better to contrast with the bleak events unfolding inside the hotel. It’s outstanding work from a master technician, and it’s surprising that he had a very brief film career, mainly in documentaries. Enormous credit must also go to whoever found such stunning locations. The opening, where Fani punts through a sea of reeds to an abandoned boathouse, the two-tier cemetery where she visits her mother’s grave, and the almost medieval hotel basement all assist with the film’s visual aesthetic and help Barilli to sign his work with a memorable visual quality.
So, why does this film seem to have fallen between the cracks? That’s probably due to the disappointing final act. Events tie up in a mundane and entirely unconvincing way with the sudden introduction of a new character, played by Máximo Valverde. He appears as if from nowhere in the last ten minutes, his fumbled introduction making it almost look like he has stepped in from another film. It’s so clumsy and jarring that it even raises the possibility that the character may have been conjured out of our heroine’s imagination as she descends into madness. However, that wouldn’t make much sense with how things are finally resolved. This last-ditch plot development feels so redundant and dumb that the obvious assumption is that the writers had painted themselves into a corner and couldn’t figure a decent way out. It doesn’t devalue all the great work that’s gone before, but it makes a damn good attempt. It’s a huge disappointment.
Fani was born Eleonora Cristofani in a mill town in north-east Italy about 50km from Venice in 1954. Winning a teenage beauty contest in 1971 set her career in motion, and she debuted in a supporting role in the crime comedy ‘Metti… che ti rompo il muso’ (1973). Featured roles followed in several similar projects before she got the chance to stretch her acting wings in the French-Italian crime thriller ‘Act of Aggression/L’agression (1975), which starred Jean-Louis Trintignant and Catherine Deneuve. Controversial bestiality drama ‘Dog Lay Afternoon/Bestialità’ (1976) and the sexually-themed ‘Sweet Adolescents/Nenè’ (1977) threatened to take her career in a certain direction, and ‘Giallo in Venice/Giallo a Venezia’ (1979) is also somewhat notorious for its adult content. Although subsequent projects returned her to the mainstream, her career was effectively over by the early 1980s, her last appearance being in the obscure 20-minute short film ‘Dall’ascensore’ (1986).
Not one for Giallo aficionados hooked on death and blood. However, it’s still a highly worthwhile effort, superbly made. It might have been a classic if it hadn’t been for that climax.