La ragazza di Trieste

Wretched movie. A middle-aged man's fantasy, some beautiful young girl and her madness appear principally so that the aging self-satisfied male lead can have an important and intriguing emotional upheaval. Not quite as egregious as Jean-Claude Brissau's Les anges exterminateurs, where the poor misunderstood put-upon director believes he should be loved by angels because of the importance of his libido, but not far off.

Ornella Muti is excellent though, deploying a lot of skill to rise above the material.

The background music is awful. At least the subtitles (in the version I saw) can't be blamed on the director. They appear to have been done by machine translation.

A middle-aged artist (Ben Gazarra) sketching on the beach witnesses a young woman (Ornella Muti) being rescued from drowning. He loans her a blanket. Later she returns the blanket and they have sex several times, but she always leaves right afterward, leaving the man to wonder who she is and where she goes. Things become more complicated as he begins to fall in love with her, and after his regular girlfriend (Mimsy Farmer), with whom he has a curiously open relationship, returns. He eventually begins to realize his mysterious new lover may be very much insane.

Muti is excellent in this movie, but it's unfortunate that she really has to struggle here against her own incredible beauty. You really have to suspend your disbelief that you are NOT watching someone who is quite literally one of the most beautiful women in the world in scenes where she has to fake drownings or sit in an outdoor café in a mini-skirt with her legs splayed to get attention from men. (With the average attractive woman this would be believable, but with someone that looks like Muti you would expect a riot, a traffic pile-up, or a line of guys waiting to administer mouth-to-mouth). Her affair with an old codger like Gazarra also strains credibility (the pair were also teamed, even more implausibly, in Marco Ferreti's biopic of poet Charles Bukowski "Tales of Ordinary Madness"). Still Muti turns in a truly superb performance. Gazarra is also more than adequate. Farmer is as irritating as usual, but at least here she's meant to be here.

This was apparently based on a novel by the talented Italian director Pasquale Campanile Festa, who also directed "The Libertine", "Hitch-hike" and "Body of a Woman" (and who definitely knew his way around the bodies of some beautiful women like Catherine Spaak, Corrine Clery, Lili Karati, and, of course Muti). Unfortunately, the import DVD I saw was obviously ported from a poor video source and is kind of grainy and too dark at times (most regrettably during some of Mutti's nude scenes). This is a very decent movie and really deserves a better transfer. Still it's a must-see for any Italian movie fans, teaming up one of Italy's most incredible (and incredibly beautiful) actresses, and one of Italy's most talented (if underrated when compared to more famous contemporaries like Fellini, Antonioni, or Pasolini) directors. Definitely recommended.

The actors Ben Gazzara and Ornella Muti were a successful team in Marco Ferreri's „Tales of Ordinary Madness" in 1981, so they made another movie together during the following year. This time, Muti plays Nicole, a girl desperate to get attention; in the opening scene at the beach, she pretends she's drowning so that someone will pick her up! Nicole falls in love with the much older cartoonist Romani (Gazzara), and even though he notices that she is telling him lies constantly, for example that she'd be rich and happy or about to be married, he doesn't realize to what extent she lost touch with reality: actually, Nicole needs treatment by a psychiatrist. She tells Romani she's flying to London, but actually she enters a mental hospital. She has prepared letters her sister can send from London, so while Romani reads them and thinks she's fine, she is suffering terribly among lunatics. When he finds out the truth, what will he do?

„The Girl From Trieste" doesn't have the provocative punch of a Bukowski story like „Tales of Ordinary Madness", arguably Campanile was a more conservative director than Ferreri, anyway. The locations of Trieste and Venice could have been put to better use, since these cities live so much in the past (visiting them is close to time travel) that a more surreal, uneasy feeling could have been created. I'm not saying „The Girl From Trieste" is a bad movie, but maybe it doesn't entirely satisfy. It holds a lot of interest with its two unpredictable characters, worth watching for Muti fans anytime. With more than 10 years experience in movies already, she reached the height of her beauty and acting skill in the early 80s.