Salvare la faccia

More psychological style giallo here, but still interesting, as usual involving the corrupt and over privileged.

Young, daft Licia is talked into going to a whorehouse to have sex with her boyfriend Mario, not knowing that Mario merely intends to use the situation to blackmail Licia's dad, a rich business magnate with many ties to the Church and the local community. Her dad responds by declaring that Licia did what she did because she was nuts, and has her thrown in a loony bin. Licia for some reason doesn't take this too well, and hell mend everyone involved when she gets out...

Licia casts her net wide when picking potential victims, but then again there are many folk in her life that are corrupt and more immoral than they made her out to be. Her father after all is having an affair with his business partner's wife, who is basically scheming to have her husband put into some political position of power. Her own sister has only been married to her husband for business purposes, and he seems to have the hots for Licia, as you do when your sister in law starts parading around the place half naked in front of you. Mario the blackmailer doesn't escape too easy either, and finds himself a pawn in Licia's game.

The best thing about the film is Adrienne Larussa as Licia. She seems to try to blend back into society once released but quickly finds she can't. She also becomes really happy when she decides that she's just going to destroy everyone instead, leading to many scenes where the characters are injured or confused by Licia's antics, including her splicing images of her father's affairs into a business pitch, and giving a non-fatal electrocution to her sister.

This is still old school giallo however, so don't expect and excess of blood and gore. There is a freak out dancing scene involving Licia and her dad's assistant that's pretty funny though, plus a terrible song at the beginning. This film involves mind games, blackmail, that sort of thing, but shouldn't be overlooked. If you like Adrienne Larussa you'll love this, because the camera lingers over her most of the time.

This drama thriller tells the revenge of Licia (Adrienne La Russa, Beatrice Cenci) against her family who has betrayed her. As a matter of fact, to protect his respectability and avoid a scandal, her father Marco (Rossano Brazzi, the film director), a rich industrial for whom "wealth and power must be preserved at any cost", has got her restrained in an asylum, after she has been caught by paparazzi in a louche hostel with her lover Mario (Nino Castelnuovo, Un Maledetto Imbroglio), an equivocal art photographer, during an important inauguration conducted by the cardinal (Marcello Bonini Olas, Delirio Caldo). Her own sister Giovanna (Paola Pitagora, Il Vero e il Falso), who "has not the courage to say no", hasn't quite sustained her well, and neither Giovanna's careerist husband Francesco (Alberto de Mendoza, Una sull'Altra), and even Mario lets her down after receiving money from her father, turning her who dreamed herself as a Cinderella into an Erinye.

After she quits the asylum, "changed but alive", she decides thus, being after all crazy, to systematically destroy her entourage, first by using Mario to uncover the financial scandals linking her father to a "honorable politician" (Nestor Garay, Serafino), his ambitious wife Laura (Idelma Carlo, Fin de Fiesta), who is Marco's mistress, and their straw man Paterlini (Renzo Petretto, Vita segreta di una diciottenne). And if "daddy said the world was lovely", as sung in the English version opening, "love your neighbor as yourself and kill them all right" sings in response the Italian version. Dragged by their empty life and their own vices, the members of this so-called "close-knit and real family" will fall one after the other, because they are "already dead", having nothing more left than "their face to salve", as put by the original title, that's to say "very few". And Licia will have to drive until the very end the consequences of her plot in order to prepare her final face to face with her father. (Viewed in Italian 1h28 version.)

A beautiful, wealthy young heiress (Adriana La Russa) is tricked by her no-good, blackmailer lover (Nino Castelnuevo) into going to a brothel to make love. After she is caught up in a police raid her lover arranges, her family, to save face, decides to have her put in a mental institution. She gets out, and pretending to be crazy (like a very sexy female Hamlet), proceeds to get revenge on everybody including her lover, older sister, brother-in-law, and not least of all, her father (Rosanno Brazzi, who also directed).

This is basically a late 60's Italian gialli. It is not nearly as violent as the films that would later follow Dario Argento's "Bird with Crystal Plumage". It's perhaps more in the the spirit of the "Diabolique"/"Dolce Vita"-type gialli of the late 60's, typified by the films Umberto Lenzi made with Carroll Baker, where jaded wealthy jet-set types scheme against each other. This movie is not as stylized as the Lenzi/Baker films (the direction is actually a little flat), but it is has a good script and it is very well acted, especially by LaRussa. LaRussa had also appeared in Lucio Fulci's "Beatrice Cenci", another film about twisted family relations. She is great and very sexy here as she seduces her hapless brother-in-law, frames one character for the murder of another, and drives yet another to an early death. LaRussa kind of reminded of the late Soledad Miranda in films like "She Killed in Ecstasy". There's little doubt for her victims that beneath her seeming madness lies a scheming malevolence, but they simply can't resist her (much like a male praying mantis can't resist the female that is going to tear him apart and devour him). LaRussa may not quite be as sexy as Soledad Miranda (but who the hell he is?); however, she may very well be a better actress.

This is not one of the better directed gialli, but it has a strong plot and is very well acted, and it certainly deserves to be more widely seen.

Obscure and unusual thriller starring the most effective American actress, Adrienne Larussa, who appeared in Fulci's great Perversion Story the same year. The male lead is famed Italian actor, Rossano Brazzi, who also here directs. It is a decent directorial effort but possibly the two roles made life a little difficult and there do seem to be moments where a little more clarity was needed. A little more thought might have been given to the soundtrack as well as one or two garish tunes seem to go round and round. Still, its a good story involving corruption in high places (what in Italy, surely not!) and a young women seeking revenge for an injustice done. Sex and violence a bit thin on the ground but Larussa's performance is so beguiling we are kept interested and amused throughout.