The Butcher

Not that, in its substance, «Il macellaio» is particularly distant from the average porn movie. It features a butch, a stunner, alternance between a wealthy house and the popular market of 'A Vucciria in Palermo, Sicily, a sunny picturesque cross-section of Mediterranean civilization's, still half-alive to our day, roots. None of the cast could appear capable of being judged an actor, less for Predrag Manojlovic - who in fact stated his uneasiness about this work -, nobody would likely say there is a writing behind action or a director behind the camera, and the eventual brazen-facedness of someone trying to suggest this is art would met the typical perplexed and hardly kind smile statements of this kind meet when made about porns. It is nevertheless to be stated that Alba Parietti's sensuality is so remarkable as to heat the view and give it mean yet not devoid of energy sexual charge, notwithstanding she can't be classified as an actress.

This film lacks more things, like a more inspired final and more consistent content. Many scenes do nothing than to be a tour guide, showing us Palermo (which is not bad for those without opportunities to travel...). But even as it is, it's not a bad film, is very realistic, with problems extracted from real life. True love, sexual desire, betrayal, the desire to adopt a child. Some commentators have written it is porn or Erotica. Definitely, it is not porn. And Erotica is what Joe D'Amato and Tinto Brass have done. It's better to abstain to write when you don't know what to say, what's the truth. The film has gorgeous music (you can hear some nice songs by Nino D'Angelo in the soundtrack), it's carefully filmed and edited. The most successful moment are those alternating scenes of love, culminating with the orgasm of Alina, on the "Hallelujah" from Messiah oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel.

It seems that director Aurelio Grimaldi did not waste the viewer's time with irrelative details. The central theme of story is about an upper class wife (Alba Parietti) who owns an art gallery, finds herself attracted to the thing she always disliked. Being a vegetarian, one day, she dropped down and was taken to a psychologist, who recommended that she should start eating meat since her body is lacking iron vitamin. While her husband away, she was exposed to the world of meat and the process of meat-cutting in the butcher's shop. She forced herself to accept the change from being a vegetarian to a normal meat consumer. Then, and towards the second part of the movie, the story takes a different track. It is a soft-porno, and it fits in the genre of erotica. Alba Parietti face's expression during the process of meat-cutting in the butcher's shop push the art of erotic films two steps ahead. I highly recommend this movie for some who enjoys erotica as an art.