La bruja en amor

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!

This is an absolute masterpiece of extravagant, sensuous Continental 60s art cinema, and provides an "incendiary" Gothic femme fatale to rival the Hayworths and Gardners of film noir. Nominally a horror film (which only becomes completely apparent during the last reel), it actually fits nicely into that 60s subgenre of manipulative mind games and metaphysical character duality, not unlike Losey's "The Servant" (though it's closer in execution to his elegiac "Eva"). Although it's constantly threatening to unravel under the stress of its own pretensions (as was the fate of many international art films of the time), Damiani is firmly in control as he continues to up the ante with a bacchanalia of outrageously stylish devices, visual metaphors and tactile atmospherics. Schiaffino is one of those classic beauties who seemed to fall out of Italian poplar trees at the time, Johnson is suitably arrogant in his machismo, and the exotic flute-and-bongo score is a retro dream driving the erotic game-playing. Many will find its excesses over-the-top or campy, and it's startlingly misogynist at times, but for those tuned in to the excesses of the 60s, this is a mindbending treat right up to the astonishing but fitting conclusion. (As a footnote, it's now plain that Bertolucci's "Last Tango" was not the first to play the make-love-without-touching game.) If you enjoyed this one, try to find the obscure "Death on the Four Poster", which plays with similar themes on a much more transparent, but enjoyable, level.

Both Luis Bunuel and Carlos Saura considered transferring 'Aura' of Carlos Fuentes to the screen but here it is directed by one who is not in the same league, Damiano Damiani. Here we have superb cinematography courtesy of Leonarda Barboni and an atmospheric score by Luis Bacalov, a future Oscar winner. The cast is excellent. There is Richard Johnson, very well 'dubbed', who was in great demand in the 1960's, Sarah Ferrati, Gian Maria Volonte and the divine Rosanna Schiaffino whose husband at the time, Alfredo Bini, produced. To his credit Damiani 's film is certainly a cut above others of this type where 'supernatural forces' are at work and holds ones interest with its elegance, atmosphere and literate script. It is also extremely erotic and the 'hands free' sequence one of the film's highlights! It is a wee bit long and the ending doesn't quite come off but it is still eminently watchable, especially if you are a devotee of Rosanna Schiaffino. Needless to say Fuentes was not impressed and no doubt wished Bunuel or Saura had filmed it. I implore you to avoid the version where everyone is dubbed into American.

What is wrong with this film? Something is very wrong from the beginning, which even Richard Johnson feels from the start, and yet he stays on when he shouldn't in a kind of subconscious urge to go to the bottom of the undefinable anomaly, which he does.

He is allured by an old lady to take on the task of catalogizing the books and manuscripts of an enormous old library in the grand old palace where the lady lives, but it appears that she has a daughter who is as attractive and sensual as the old lady is not. Of course he stays on by the attraction and mystery of this daughter, but after some time it appears that he has a rival, who also is engaged in a passionate relationship with her. There the problems begin getting constantly thicker to the very end.

There is nothing wrong with the actors or the story or the very interesting and skilful cinematography, but this is a case involving suopernatural elements, so there is some magic involved, but that is what is lacking. There is no magic at all here. Rosanna Schiaffino as the daughter is not convincing but rather callous no matter how beautiful she is, Sarah Ferrati as the grand old lady is repellent in her hard inhumanity, Gian Maria Volonte is perfect enough for his passionate part like Richard Johnson, but this is great cinematography entirely without magic, which is the most important thing, especially in a story like this. Instead of being fascinated and involved in the mystery, you are disgusted and learn to hate the old lady just like Richard Johnson does, so this is not a very recommendable film, unless you like directors like Bertolucci, which has the same callous and inhuman way of screening humans in erotic involvements focussing on sex and forgetting all about love.

This is a pleasantly dated picture, the story of a womanizing linguist who is hired to sort through an old widow's sexual biography (written by her late husband) and gets tangled up with his employer's mysterious beautiful daughter and her lover. Very Italian, slightly Gothic, slightly mod, and erotic enough (for its time), this is a slow but pretty movie, which is also pretty satisfying, all things considered.