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Rating: In recent months, the Italian political debate has been heavily focused on the possible enactment of the Zan decree-law against homotransphobia. Without delving into the technical details of the aforementioned bill (while still agreeing on the principle of equality and respect for all citizens regardless of gender and sexual orientation), as a good cinephile, I went back to watch and rewatch "Immacolata e Concetta, l'altra gelosia," the debut film of Salvatore Piscicelli (a somewhat unjustly underrated director) which was released in theaters in 1980.
At the time, it was a decidedly tough film for the average Italian viewer, but it should be noted that it was inspired by a news story that occurred towards the end of the 1970s in the province of Naples (around Pomigliano) where a jealousy drama involved two lesbian women. And this further confirms the reality that equals imagination and how even so-called different love, as old as the world, can follow classic dynamics (falling in love and jealousy).
The director follows the events of the two protagonists, Immacolata and Concetta. The former, the owner of a economically unviable butcher shop, ends up in prison for inducing a minor into prostitution and meets Concetta there, an agricultural worker guilty of wounding her husband's jealous lover. Love blossoms between the two and turns into overwhelming passion once they are released from prison. To the general scandal, Immacolata brings Concetta home to live with her (and the former's husband cannot object since he is not the official owner of the house). Put this way, it might seem like a burning love story on a good path, except Immacolata's daughter falls ill, and she faces additional expenses, on top of those of the butcher shop. The only financial help can come from Ciro, a rich butcher manager in Naples and a persistent suitor of Immacolata who, also revealing himself to have a bisexual orientation and combining business with pleasure, accepts and ends up in bed with the man, and even becomes pregnant. Although she is inclined to have an abortion, the situation becomes so tangled that it triggers Concetta's strong jealousy, who is a sort of intransigent Taliban of love and sex seen through a lesbian lens. The outcome can only be tragic when one does not intend to accept other relationships from the loved one.
The film's innovative charge lies in the fact that, starting from a classic setup typical of Neapolitan melodrama based on conflicting loves and passions, substantial updates are made that render the dynamics of the romantic entanglements explicit. The director, adopting an objective approach in a Fassbinder style, spares nothing in the depiction of sexual relations, both between the two women engaged in giving each other mutual pleasure, and between Immacolata and Ciro (notable is the shot of the camera filming from above the embrace of the two, him over her, both naked on the bed moving rhythmically). The overall effect is such that, for a viewer, there remains a doubt about the authenticity or simulation of what is filmed, as in the first case it is a pornographic film, in the second a well-made erotic film. Added to this is the director's great effectiveness in directing actors and actresses, especially the latter since Ida Di Benedetto (Immacolata) and Marcella Michelangeli (Concetta) did not have good character chemistry and sparks could arise between the two on and off the set.
Furthermore, the work also portrays a social background (in the Neapolitan area) in profound transformation, so much so that a bucolic reality was forcefully replaced by an increasingly industrialized dimension and, faced with new general economic trends, adaptation was necessary and the character of Immacolata, in this, is characterized as attentive to seizing new work and growth opportunities offered by her lover Ciro, confirming herself as a strong and unscrupulous woman (the opposite of Concetta, too intransigent and dogmatic in love).
Therefore, a film to be rediscovered (some would dismissively classify it as a "sex and flesh film"), if only to proceed to reevaluate a director like Piscicelli capable of modernizing Neapolitan melodrama in both form and substance.
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