Caresses bourgeoises

Eriprando's A SPIRAL OF MIST is a most curious film -for me it typifies the "keeping up with the Joneses" problems of a declining national cinema in Italy at the end of the '70s. A great cast, okay soap opera material and a talented director fell sway to the world's increasing interest in porn.

That's a shame because Visconti had rounded up a set of French and Italian thesps who would have done uncle Luchino proud. But why subject them to the ignominy of gratuitous full-nude & sex scenes, much in the manner of a trashy American pic (see Laurence Olivier in THE BETSY) of the period? Because the public in an era of "porno chic" expected stronger stuff in even their mainstream fare.

Visconti was coming off a great local hit, the rape/kidnap exploitation smash ORCA, which generated a successful sequel and is today still much enjoyed on the collector's circuit. With MIST he moved into soap opera territory, similar to the work of his uncle's best follower Mauro Bolognini. The story deals with the marital problems of several couples, plus their sexual escapades with their servants, plus an unresolved (and half-hearted) murder mystery, that all spells night time soap.

What took me aback was the clearly compromised injection of sexploitation elements into the narrative. By film's end there are full-frontal nude scenes by nine (3 of them male) of the principal players, not extras or bit roles. The glamorous French star Claude Jade, who brightened up several Truffaut movies, looks positively embarrassed when she is called upon to join hubby Duilio Del Prete in the shower; she comically and daintily puts on a shower cap in this scene. Elsewhere, her acting is top-notch.

Del Prete, who flirted oh-so briefly with American stardom under the tutelage of Peter Bogdanovich with leads in DAISY MILLER and AT LONG LAST LOVE, was experienced in classic sex films opposite such bombastic beauties as Laura Antonelli and Ursula Andress, but it still is disconcerting to see him with his Johnson hanging out here. Later in the film his servant girl gives him a hand job, and we know Visconti is aiming low.

Similarly, a very lovely starlet who never made it in films, Carole Chauvet, is cast as the central character Valeria, married to loathsome Marc Porel, and seems quite natural au naturel. She gives hubby a blow job later in the film which is an extended scene in closeup, merely kept softcore by the careful framing which does not show explicit penetration. Was this artistically necessary, or just to appease the fans' basest instincts? Stefano Satta Flores gives perhaps the best male performance as a police inspector investigating Valeria's death while she was out hunting in the woods with Porel. Film presents her fate, RASHOMON-style, in a series of many brief flashbacks, all punctuated by the yellow rain-slicker she's wearing. Picture leaves the solution to this mystery up in the air, though Porel is Prime Suspect throughout.

Also adding mightily to the prurient content is Martine Brochard, a MILF of a nurse who is constantly injecting the cast in the rump with unspecified drugs (adding to the general Visconti Sr. atmosphere of decadence). More obviously, the beautiful young starlet Eleonora Giorgi pops up in the second half of the film, also for purely pulchritudinous purposes.

On a sleaze level, this adds up to enjoyably trashy entertainment, though I for one would have preferred a more straight-forward and conclusive handling of the mystery/suspense elements of the story. It probably represents a good example of cultural differences: never released in America the film would have been X-rated here all the way, yet for a European audience of the late '70s it was probably taken in stride, not unlike the way Scandi audiences lapped up "family porn" comedies such as the BEDSIDE and IN THE SIGN OF... series starring Ole Søltoft.

This movie is beautifully shot and exquisitely set, written, and served by the cast : and, just because there's always such a moralistic and disturbing content so typical of the bored Northen Italian upper class of the time ( mid 1970's) so well described and exquisitely, almost realistically, appointed here, that is why I so generously gave it a 7 out of 10 votes! Unlike the previous reviewer (now.. with all my respects, but Oh my God, have I ever, even read such a silly, puritanical , virtually pointless, and untrue review, over a movie that lastly seems to depend from the aberration of nudity and sex, themselves ?! Next time just go for Walt Disney, OK?). Sorry, I think actually this was a very psychological, and extremely erotic elaboration of a possible idea of a in depth research into the bored and yet hopeful love lives of a few wealthy, and constantly conditioned by the moralist of their "stale" time of reflux - just after a decade spent considering, or not , the counter culture - to choose lives so abruptly adverse to their real feelings: and, so sexuality here is key, and the exploitation of it through the unconscious, and the blame of a possible subconscious faith that becomes very much tragic and realistic, when almost as cutting a deep crack into the so hated routine of the frantically demised and shrewdly mannered lead characters, a real death comes with its embarrassing excitement to propose to each one of them, but even to a few, well described supporting roles, almost a motive of escape from the existential boredom they all live as if it were almost a golden cage, instead of a very much bourgeois trap, revealing them as many others had been before and will be made again,a not all so loving, not all so kind, not all so pretty, perfect and possibly aristocrat, group of friends, but if anything a very much more possible, flawed and lustful nest of vipers! And, it's here I believe, where this movie fails, unfortunately, and despite its extremely exquisite presentation, its very much critical and yet simply perfect idea, and the refined, always quite realistic (for the time of course!) description of mores and characters , lost ideologies, and vane passions, primarily all becoming an obsolete abuse, or an outraged act so heavily against themselves, finally, leaving obvious, that is, only what obvious it is,and has been for a long time, and, even to those who have such a hard time coping and dealing with it: decadence! Yes, the main true interest of our beautiful and pragmatically over chic, conservative protagonists is a tragic sense of self rendition, madly accompanied by a lack of self esteem, while only sheer violence and a rather lusted lecherous need to almost abuse themselves and others grows more and more so inevitable and manifesting the tired and uneasy living and hated kept secrets or positions of one another ! But, while this same idea would have shined in the hands of some great director like let's say, Michelangelo Antonioni ( oh God i would have loved to see what Antonioni could have made out of this, and what cast he would have assembled, without in any case wanting to take away from this more B movie cast, which however must be recognized for its almost incredible effectiveness and hard work!) becoming just a meditative parabola over the extremism of the social class and their lengthy decadent fall, in an atmosphere suspended almost among the divine and the unconscious, becoming probably a late 1970's rather sought closure to all of Antonioni's incommunicable'a outstanding dramas filmed in the early 1960's, this film staying rather consistently far away from that route, does not even embrace the genius and way more raw and provocative rebellion and true breaking ground attitude that a Lars Von Trier, 20 years later would take, with it's marvelously cruel and almost pornographic work of Art, in the U.S., of course, heavily censored "The Idiots" in 1999, one of the very best Dogma films ever made! In Eriprando Visconti's almost garnished and way too polished film, every thing stays instead inevitably uneven and on the surface for a true lack of strong inspiration and of intents, and very cautiously trying to scandalize the same classes ( such as our previous reviewer who was clinging on counting on the naked bodies instead of concentrating of what might have made him/her do so! ) of the times with probably the thanks of his producers and International distributors, which again at the time, might have seen in this badly managed if beautifully photographed Spiral, the only reasons of possible financial gains.

A very slow and uninteresting murder mystery from Italy. I was hoping for giallo thrills but this doesn't qualify as such and instead it feels like an arthouse soap opera with a heavy emphasis on sex and nudity, particularly the latter. This has more casual male full frontal nudity than I can remember seeing in any other movie and the ladies regularly strip off too. It really doesn't add up to much.

Sentimental drama around the death of Valeria (Carole Chauvet, Le Grand Fanfaron) during a hunt accident for which her husband Fabrizio (Marc Porel, Sette Notte in Nero) is suspected to have committed a "divorce Italian style". But the inquiry led by the judge Renato (Stefano Satta Flores, Quattro Mosche di velluto grigio) doesn't find any plausible motivation. The issue thus evolves upon couple difficulties within a matrimonial institution in deep mutation.

Valeria and Fabrizio were apparently happy, "a wonderful couple, young and rich" as explained by the game keeper Boris (Giorgio Trestini, Milano Calibro 9). But Valeria, despite their two children (the ones of the director), felt a wide dissatisfaction, suffering from a position of petty provincial frustrated in her ambitions, alongside a husband living secluded in the countryside on the sidelines of his wealthy family. A family ruled by the patriarch Pietro (Corrado Gaipa, Anna quel particolare piacere) and which members, Costanza (Marina Berti, L'Ultimo Treno della notte) and Piero (Carlo Puri, Autostop Rosso Sangue), seek above all to avoid scandal.

As stated by the old Pietro, "a perfect marriage is a mere contradiction", and the failure of Fabrizio and Valeria's union echoes with the wrecking of the one of the other child of the family Maria Teresa (Claude Jade, Number One), whose impotent husband Marcello (Duilio Del Prete, La Polizia incrimina la Legge assolve) pretends to have made their maid Armida (Anna Bonaiuto, Squadra Antifurto) pregnant, in fact with the help of his driver Alfredo (Flavio Andreini, La Settima Donna/Last House on the Beach), in order to get their marriage cancelled.

Confronted with this sentimental and social disaster, judge Renato, uneasy between a possessive mother (Barbara Pilavin, Ancora una volta prima di lasciarci) and an absent father (Enzo Fiermonte, Mio Caro Assassino), is reduced to invoke love to know if he could built a shared future with his girlfriend Lidia (Eleonora Giorgi, Liberati armati pericolosi), as for her "marriage is only the reflect of our own weaknesses and failures".

The music of Weber reminds with cruelty to all the protagonists, including Fabrizio's friend the doctor Vittorio (Flavio Bucci, La Orca, from the same), who lies to his girlfriend the nurse Lavinia (Martine Brochard, Gatti Rossi in un labirinto di vetro) pretending for 10 years being married, that, far from being marksmen or sharpshooters, they have all finally missed the target of their life. (Viewed in Italian 1h46 version.)