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Rating: Ozpetek's latest film isn't bad.
Under the pretext of a thriller, the mystery around which the story unfolds, he tells us about a veiled Naples.
It is the Naples of works of art, theater, kabbalah, and seers.
The Naples of madness and loneliness, poisons and hypocrisies, the "malamente" rich, powerful, elegant, unsuspecting.
The film, refined and elegant, has a classical construction typical of the thriller genre: a prologue, the crime, the mystery (which is never revealed because it is actually only "veiled" like Naples, it's clear they did it, right?)
As it is clear that yes, well, she...
A film that has a 70s atmosphere, in how it’s shot, with slow long takes lingering on objects (the works of art "act" in a sense, proudly displaying themselves). Moreover, most of the cast (Peppe Barra, Anna Bonaiuto, Lina Sastri, Isabella Ferrari) are between 50 and 70 years old, moving between verdicts and memories...
But the protagonists are two and are younger (between 30 and 40 years old): Giovanna Mezzogiorno is Adriana. At a party, in an elegant Neapolitan living room, she meets Andrea, younger than her (Alessandro Borghi, yes him again, very much in demand). They end up in bed that very night, in a scandalous sex scene that seems to have caused great embarrassment for Mezzogiorno, and I’d understand why—it’s almost porn...
Adriana is a lonely middle-aged woman (a doctor, she performs autopsies on cadavers) and is, in just one night and in every sense, completely overwhelmed by Andrea. A passionate and violent love, immediate, visceral, powerful.
The two arrange to meet the next day at the museum at 6:00 PM, but Andrea doesn’t show up and doesn't answer the phone.
The mystery begins, the crime.
I won't go further, and if you're interested in the film, which is worth watching, don't read online spoilers.
The film impressed me a lot from a technical standpoint, the use of the camera, see the prologue and the long takes on the lavish interiors of the living rooms, see again how the camera strolls slowly and meticulously to unveil the alleys of Naples.
The dialogues are also quite good, and the actors (mostly theatrical) are excellent, the aphorisms, the pearls of wisdom, the "verdicts" we mentioned, typically Neapolitan.
The editing and the soundtrack are also noteworthy.
Overall, the film is technically almost flawless.
I can't say the same for the plot. Although well-constructed, perhaps too much so (there’s a lot of care in unraveling the story), it gives the impression of being somewhat predictable, "too constructed" precisely. Finally, I didn’t appreciate the final "twist" which I found rather predictable and gratuitous (to me it “doesn’t fit” as they say in Naples).
All in all, these are minor faults, the film is worth it.
I’ll give it 4 stars because I’m generous, but maybe it's 3 and a half.
Rating 7 minus minus.
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