By Ron Wilkinson Mar 13, 2008, 14:01 GMT
High quality pictures and a smashing sound track with no slack in the suspense until the curtain drops. A fine piece of fright
Award winning Xenia Rappoport plays Irena, the heroine with a dark and mysterious past, on a mission to Italy for reasons unknown. Growing up in the Ukraine, her past includes indescribable terror and abuse at the hands of strangers as well as from the psychopathic procurer who transports her throughout Europe one step ahead of the law. But the worst comes to Irena only when the forced sex stops and she is given a room of her own in which to wait for the fearful day when she is asked to give up that which means more to her than life itself.
Irena’s past at the hands of brutal pimp Mold (Michele Placido) is shown through as a terribly effective series of horrendous flashbacks splashing over the screen. She is tied up and pushed down. She can’t get up. But she has to get up. The cinematography takes the viewer into the horrible abuse that is the Eastern European sex trade. The camera shifts from high to low, from medium shots of the abused and the abuser to close-ups of the fear and determination in Irena’s eyes as she struggles to break free.
When one last act of bloody violence gives her a window of opportunity she escapes with only one thought in mind. She is obsessed by a need that her years of deprivation have ground into her soul, she immediately heads for Italy. With an inexplicably large sum of money in her clothes but a look of forlorn insanity in her eyes, she makes her way across the city of Velarchi searching like a woman possessed in papers and want ads. She says she needs work and she finds it, in a decrepit, moldering old house with a Hitchcockian staircase spiraling up to the forbidden rooms above.
The forbidden rooms are occupied by a wealthy family with a mentally inform child. The girl is bright enough, but withdrawn and suspicious. As Irena scrubs the staircase below she finds clever ways of probing into the secrets of the family upstairs, rising higher and higher on the staircase and the camera lurks in the depths below and in the peak of the staircase above. With a truly beautiful progression of shots Irena slowly ascends the stairs, ever closer to the prize that drove her to risk the most terrible of deaths. The prize every man and woman will kill for.
So tormented is Irena that she joins her former boss’ thuggery in her near hysterical quest. She steal keys for long enough to get a quick copy. The ticket counter on the wall says ten customers to go. Will she have enough time? Five, four, three, two, like the bottles of Champaign at Alexander Sebastian’s party in “Notorious,” the clock ticks down like the sand leaving the hourglass of her future. A fall down the stairs, appearing accidental, is every bit as nasty as Richard Widmark’s move with the helpless old moan in “Kiss of Death.”
She is into the lives of the wealthy family, working miracles with their withdrawn and inarticulate daughter, Tea (Clara Dossena). The daughter is bullied at school, unsure of herself. Irena ties her up and pushes her down. Tormenting her and forcing her to stand on her own. The camera shots echo the prurient keyhole perspective of Irena’s earlier torture at the hand of the vicious pimp. Low shots, taking the audience to the carpet, as helpless as a person bound and gagged; thrown down, only to get up and be thrown down again. When Tea’s mother, Valeria (Claudia Gerini) learns of Irena’s intentions, the two are locked in yet another death struggle for the girl.
Unexplained vandalism destroys Irena’s apartment, but she doesn’t care. She moves in with the family. Then the last straw when the devils of her past come storming after her. She is so close to finding the key to her past and her future. But her particular brand of success eludes us until almost the very last scene.
Gargoyles spouting water, dead plants harboring a fortune, views through distant windows and those long, spiraling shots up that interminable staircase.
If you love Hitchcock, you will truly get a kick out of director Giuseppe Tornatore’s suspense thriller. The film is suspenseful, but it doesn’t pander to suspense with simple riddles. The suspense is transferred to the creaking boards of an ancient crumbling room, the spidery branches of small, dead plants and the gurgling fountain mouths of horrific statues. Above all, the suspense is ratcheted up by the brilliant camera work of lenser Fabio Zamarion (landing the Italian David Award for this picture) and the exciting score of maestro Ennio Morricone.
MPAA: Not RatedRuntime: 118 minutes Country: Italy / France Language: Italian Color: Color
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