This is a strange one. Richard Johnson (whom you might know from Martin Clunes' Doc Martin) is a lover of many women in Rome (a fanny rat, as they say). The thing is, he's getting the feeling that there's this creepy old woman following him around the place. After trying to track her down several times he responds to an ultra specific advert in a magazine looking for a librarian who exactly fits his description - you guessed it -the library is in a creepy old mansion in the middle of Rome and the old lady is seemingly the only inhabitant.
The old lady wants him to transcribe all her dead husband's writing and sort the library out and even live in the house. Richard thinks she's full of crap and is halfway out the door when the old lady's daughter Aura makes an appearance, which coincides with Richard reconsidering the job while making eyes at Aura (and she seems up for it!).
Aura's up for it only if Richard takes the job, moves in, doesn't mind all the dead cats lying about, ignores the dead husband in the casket and gets rid of the previous transcriber who appears to have gone mad. That sounds like a good idea to Richard, who seems to be thinking with his 'lower brain' as it were.
But this is also where things start getting really weird, because Aura also seems to be stringing along the other transcriber, playing mind games with Richard, and Richard's also having to put up with the old lady seemingly spying on him all the time.
Is this film sufficiently coffee table? It seems to want to be a horror and an art-house film and some sort of serious battle of the sexes type film, but the only character you can really care about is the other transcriber, Fabrizio, played by Volonte as a very broken man. Richard is too much of a jerk to like, and even gives Aura a good punching at one point. There's rather a lot of blah in this film, but Damiano does through in a lot of strange shots and images too which keeps things from bogging down to much in dialogue. Much stuff involving shadows, darkness, and a very strange interaction between Aura and the old lady too.
Don't get me wrong though, it's an okay film, but lacking in the more cerebral aspects, like boobs and gore. This is a long long way from Richard Johnson's late eighties Italian film Ratman, that's for sure!
The old lady wants him to transcribe all her dead husband's writing and sort the library out and even live in the house. Richard thinks she's full of crap and is halfway out the door when the old lady's daughter Aura makes an appearance, which coincides with Richard reconsidering the job while making eyes at Aura (and she seems up for it!).
Aura's up for it only if Richard takes the job, moves in, doesn't mind all the dead cats lying about, ignores the dead husband in the casket and gets rid of the previous transcriber who appears to have gone mad. That sounds like a good idea to Richard, who seems to be thinking with his 'lower brain' as it were.
But this is also where things start getting really weird, because Aura also seems to be stringing along the other transcriber, playing mind games with Richard, and Richard's also having to put up with the old lady seemingly spying on him all the time.
Is this film sufficiently coffee table? It seems to want to be a horror and an art-house film and some sort of serious battle of the sexes type film, but the only character you can really care about is the other transcriber, Fabrizio, played by Volonte as a very broken man. Richard is too much of a jerk to like, and even gives Aura a good punching at one point. There's rather a lot of blah in this film, but Damiano does through in a lot of strange shots and images too which keeps things from bogging down to much in dialogue. Much stuff involving shadows, darkness, and a very strange interaction between Aura and the old lady too.
Don't get me wrong though, it's an okay film, but lacking in the more cerebral aspects, like boobs and gore. This is a long long way from Richard Johnson's late eighties Italian film Ratman, that's for sure!