Scandalo

During the 1940 invasion of France by Germany, a bourgeois housewife (Lisa Gastoni) becomes involved with an employee (Franco Nero) of the pharmacy the family runs, after the latter sexually gropes her in the dark, mistaking her for her maid with whom he is also sexually involved. As the Nazis approach, the sexual relationship between the two becomes increasingly dark, perverse, and sadomasochistic. He makes her stand naked outside on the street until a passerby sees her, and he tries to force her into a three-way with the maid. Eventually he pressures her to "deliver" her virginal teenage daughter to him.

As another reviewer remarked, it's no coincidence that this movie takes place during France's eventual capitulation to Germany. The metaphor shouldn't be lost on anyone. This movie somewhat resembles the director Salvatore Samperi's most well-known work "Malizia" (with Laura Antonelli). The end especially with the lights flickering off and on as the German mortar fire approaches very much resembles the violent thunderstorm finale of "Malizia". But this movie is even darker and more apocalyptic (or perhaps nihilistic). The relationship between the couple is much more perverse than that of the maid and the teenage boy in "Malizia", even approaching the existential emptiness of Calveani's "The Night Porter" or the bleak tragedy of Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris". The subplot with the daughter, on the other hand, actually resembles an earlier Lisa Gastoni vehicle, Fernidand DiLeo's "The Seduction". But that movie was much more exploitative with the adolescent girl being much more of a willing Lolita (and played by sexy older actress). This is a more an art film, and the girl here is a true innocent caught up in the couple's obsessive relationship and the collapse of the whole social order in the wake of the German invasion.

The greatest strength of this movie though lies in the performance of the two leads. Gastoni gives a performance that's even more powerful and daring than the one she gave in "The Seduction". Nero meanwhile plays against type as the sexually corrupt villain--only in Pasquale Campanile Festa's "Hitch-hike" did the charismatic and likable Nero play such a thoroughly unlikeable character. Clearly, this movie deserves a better DVD release as others have said (one that both looks good AND has decent English subtitles), but it is worth seeing regardless.