Sequestro di persona

Kidnapping in Sardinia: Atmospheric kidnapping shocker with Franco Nero and Charlotte Rampling

The young foreign student Christina Fisher (Charlotte Rampling) is with her boyfriend Francesco Marras (Pierluigi Apra) for the first time on his home island of Sardinia. They want to go on vacation and visit Francesco's parents (Margarita Lozano and Ennio Balbo). Suddenly Francesco is kidnapped by bandits in front of Christina. She wants to inform the police immediately, but is dissuaded from doing so by Francesco's parents and his childhood friend Gavino (Franco Nero). The kidnappers want such a large ransom that Signore Marras is forced to sell a sought-after seaside property to real estate shark Osilio (Frank Wolff). In the end, maybe that's all it's about? When Christina finally informs the police, things come to a dramatic head. But Gavino also has a score to settle with the island's powerful...

Shot in the blazing Sardinian sun, this film by Gianfranco Mingozzi still makes you shiver. It was released in Italian cinemas in 1968 and is therefore a forerunner of the great wave of mafia films from 1972 onwards. It was not shown in West German cinemas until 1973. Atmospherically dense, the word mafia isn't mentioned once! The islanders seem to know exactly what to do in a disaster like this. They don't seem to know any different. Scary and fascinating!

In a supporting role is Steffen Zacharias (1927-1989), who was born in Hamburg to Greek parents and who would appear in a number of Cinecitta productions in the following years. For the two-time EUROPEAN FILM AWARD winner (Swimming Pool, 2003 / 45 Years, 2015) Charlotte Rampling (*1946) this film was one of her first leading roles.

Recommended!

This dullish thriller utilizes the same kidnapping theme that would dominate many Italian movies (and Italian life) through at least the 70s, although later treatments tended to be more in the realm of sensational action-packed crime thrillers. This movie doesn't seem certain how seriously to take itself-there's not much action, and the Sardinian atmosphere is vivid (at least photographically), but there's not enough insight into the politics or economics that would justify a relatively non-exploitative approach.

Franco Nero plays the son of a tightfisted local landowner; his friend, son of another wealthy local landowner, is the one who is kidnapped at the beginning of the film. It's Charlotte Rampling's POV we get during that key initial scene. Yet her vacationing-Brit-girl casual girlfriend of the kidnapped man turns out to be largely superfluous to the plot, making it seem as though her inclusion was really not much more than a commercial appeal to English-speaking audiences. (Rampling being Rampling, her character also comes off as extremely glamorous but a snippy brat, so we're not all that sorry she stays on the margins.)

There are echoes here of Bertolucci's much later "Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man," particularly in some later plot revelations. But in their different ways neither film works very well. Despite its regional focus, this one feels too much like a production compromised and rendered a little characterless by the requirements of "international" casting. There's a climax of violence and desperation, but the film just hasn't worked up enough suspense for it to have that much impact. It's all a near-miss, no cheesy knock-off but not strong enough to be memorable.

Franco Nero gets dark and broody in this moody, grim kidnapping film to the point that even his HAIR is darker than usual. Sadly, an unforgivable act of animal cruelty right at the start of this one sours the whole deal, but we'll get to that later.

Set in Sardinia, we find a skeletal Charlotte Rampling getting dumped in the middle of nowhere while her student boyfriend is kidnapped by a bunch of mysterious paesani. The kidnappers outrageously demand 80 million lire for the return of the son, and his landowner father has to sell off his land in order to raise the ransom. It's lucky that rich businessman Frank Wolff offers to buy it, eh?

The kidnapped fella's best mate, jumper wearing Franco Nero, smells a rat* and starts devising a plan of his own. He also hooks up with Charlotte Rampling for a bit of moody swearing, slapping around, and horizontal bopping while Charlotte looks totally bewildered by all the strange things happening around her and almost derails everything by getting the police involved...

One thing you'll notice about this film is that there's a ton of hand-held camera work in it that gives it a kind of woozy, Bourne Identity type edge. On the other hand, there's very little action so all that hand held stuff doesn't really go anywhere. This is a film about people staring at each other, from Nero staring at Rampling, or his own father, or the father of the kidnapped guy, to the father of the kidnapped guy staring at his wife, and so on and so forth.

What I'm trying to say is that this is another character driven late sixties Eurocrime film that will probably try your patience. Or maybe it was the fact that a few minutes into the film someone drove a car straight into a herd of sheep, for real. There was no need for that whatsoever, is there?

*rats actually smell quite pleasant. This film is not to be confused with the 1975 Greek film Island of Death, which far transcends the boundaries of good taste. We'll get to that in due course.

Maybe there are minutiae of Italian culture and history in the 1960s that I'm not privy to that would help to elucidate certain aspects of the picture, but even if that's true it would only go so far in smoothing over the rough spots I recognize in short order. The kidnapping scheme we're greeted with in the opening scene seems specious, and it's accompanied by animal cruelty that in this case strikes me as something that would be hard to fake. The scene writing seems fundamentally disordered and sometimes purely flailing, a sense worsened by sequencing, direction, and cinematography that's often dubious, unimpressive, or downright unconvincing. As a prime example, consider how quasi-protagonist Christina switches on a dime in early scenes between hard-nosed frustration and determination, and care-free frivolity; even if we assume she's just putting on a brave face, the disparity is curious. The plot development frankly feels altogether scattered, to the point that the narrative itself comes across as weak and thin even as a complete tale is told. So it is, too, with the characters and dialogue - there is substance here, yet it doesn't feel like it. Gavino in particular is written with no rhyme or reason I can discern, and there's one or two characters who as far as I can tell are never particularly identified with a place in the story.

Though I'm not entirely sure why, I had high expectations before I sat to watch 'Sequestro di persona.' Those expectations have not been met. There are times when I think the acting is admirable, not least from Charlotte Rampling and perhaps Franco Nero. Too often, however, particularly where supporting parts are concerned, performances seem plainly overdone; I trust this, too, is attributable to the guiding hand of director Gianfranco Mingozzi. There's no consistency in the performances, and even if there were, the material the cast have to work with is so flimsy in both writing and realization that their skills amount to nothing here. As if to illustrate the point, at the one-hour mark we're treated to the infusion of a romantic element, as terribly contrived as one could ever be in that medium where A Man and A Woman sharing the screen must always result in their pairing. More than that, the accompanying sex scene is so laughably, amateurishly shot that on this basis alone it joins the ranks of some of the most pathetically un-sexy love scenes I've ever seen (to wit: 'BloodRayne' in 2005, 'Fatal passion' in 1995, 'Vampyres' in 1974). By this point, too, the narrative writing has become so lackadaisical that I'm not even sure what's going on any more, and I wonder if the cast knew, either; the kidnapping that kicked it off has become a mere footnote.

For as floundering as the feature is, it becomes soporific; I had the foresight to pause, but I actually did fall asleep at one point. I detect the possibility of thrills in how this is written, but as it is no excitement ever manifests, and I've all but totally checked out such that the climax doesn't bear a fraction of the impact that it should have. Why was it, again, that I watched this in the first place? I think it was Rampling's involvement that drew me in; I guess this proves again that even broadly reliable stars sometimes participate in bad movies. I at least like the filming locations. There were good ideas somewhere in here; too bad they don't meaningfully produce results. Clearly there are folks out there who find 'Sequestro di persona' a captivating, satisfying crime thriller. I'm hugely disappointed, and when all is said and done, I for one don't think this is very good at all.

A real oddity, this one! A would-be cross between a violent crime thriller (shootouts and kidnappings on the island of Sardinia) and a National Geographic documentary (rugged scenery and peasant customs). To make it even more confusing, 60s style icon Charlotte Rampling looks as if she'd just wandered in from an episode of Absolutely Fabulous. Mind you, she does look gorgeous. Alas, when I saw it, her love scene with Latino hunk Franco Nero was ignominiously snipped by censors at the Romanian Cinematheque. (Where else would you see this movie?) Its director, Gianfranco Mingozzi, ascended to Eurotrash heaven with his 1974 'nympho nun' opus Flavia The Heretic.