The marketing calls this stinker a "giallo" but like hundreds of other Italian movies it is just a poorly done film conveniently thrown into that phony pigeonhole. I wish latter-day film fans (younger than me, who actually attended Italian movies religiously in the late '60s and throughout the '70s) would realize that these individual films were not made as a genre, but merely lumped together in retrospect by some misguided know-it-all fake historians. Try some independent thinking out there!
It doesn't take much thinking to dislike GIRL FROM CORTINA, as this clumsily directed, would-be thriller just lies there. Sure, Vanessa Gravina is vapidly pretty as the heroine, who changes her hair color and hair style in order to escape an abusive painter husband and start a new life.
She fakes her death by motorcar accident off a cliff, and the film heads downward from there, as surely as the vehicle plunges towards the Gothic waves-crashing-on-rocks below, set on the Greek island of Hydra.
There are several shaggy-dog reels of her almost romancing a kindly guy back in her home town of Cortina. A dubious swinger couple who she meets naked in a sauna (!) provide some phony suspense and troilism to kill off the boring center reels, but this nonsensical movie completely falls apart when gal pal Isabel Russinova (think of Lena Olin without any talent) plots to kill Vanessa's hubby, who's conveniently tracked her down and is back to his old tricks of slapping her silly.
Quicker than you can say CLOUZOT! the untalented director Maurizio Vanni is trotting out a lame variation on the master's 1955 classic DIABOLIQUE. It's by-the-numbers imitation, with plot details transparently phony -sort of Diabolique for the mentally-impaired. I've seen many, many riffs on the original, from Curtis Harrington's splendid TV version (GAMES with James Caan) to the misguided though well-cast Hollywood remake featuring Sharon Stone & Isabelle Adjani, but there's not even a smidgen of quality here. And to make matters worse, when he's not stealing from DIABOLIQUE, Vanni throws in gimmicks dating back to an equally classic movie, GASLIGHT.
Acting is miserable throughout, ranging from the Todd Slaughter-level hamminess of the villainous husband, to the nice one scene/disgusting the next antics of Russinova and her boy friend. Instead of exciting, the final reel is very boring, and features (comically for me) rhythmic music straight out of a 1992 Sarah Young/Sean Michaels porn video!
