Finishing School

I am not quite sure if I even need to write a review about this one. . . I’ll just tell you the title: The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. One of those vividly descriptive yet cryptic giallo titles, Luciano Ercoli (Death Walks on High Heels) took his first stab at directing (pardon the pun) with this 1970 Spanish/Italian co-production written by Ernesto Gastaldi (The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail). The lady in mention is Minou (Dagmar Lassander), a bored housewife living a blasé life with her staid husband, Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi) – a man with a new invention that will hopefully save his struggling business (meaning that he is at work an awful lot). Getting no attention from Peter, she gets more than she bargained for when an unknown assailant (Simón Andreu) attacks her (with purpose) late one night while she is strolling near the ocean.

An Italian sex comedy with some class – I know, I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, the great Mario Bava (Black Sunday) co-adapts and directs Four Times That Night (1971), a film that structures itself in a similar way to Akira Kurosawa’s classic Japanese motion picture Rashomon – also, for a more modern example, think of the television series The Affair (starring Joshua Jackson, Dominic West and Ruth Wilson). Looking at one fateful night, four individuals get a chance to tell their side of the story. Dealing with perspective and viewpoint, the narrative revolves around Gianni Prada (Brett Halsey) and Tina Brandt (Daniela Giordano), a wealthy man always on the prowl – this time spotting a pious young woman in Tina.

Alfonso Cuarón’s most personal film to date (even more so than Y Tu Mamá También), 2018's Roma seeps to the screen from the filmmaker’s own memories. . . a love letter to his beloved housekeeper who helped raise him in the neighbourhood of Roma in Mexico City all those years ago. His first Netflix feature, the streaming service gave Cuarón the freedom to create his vision his way. . . with a near limitless shoot time, the man not only directed, but also wrote, produced, co-edited, handled cinematography, and even shot the motion picture. Filmed in striking black and white, it is like seeing the most picturesque of monochrome postcards, but eerily intimate ones.

With a title that brings to mind the film noirs of yesteryear, or, an egg for that matter, 1992's Hard-Boiled is an action packed extravaganza from writer/director John Woo (his last bombastic Hong Kong feature before heading over to Hollywood). With a score that often surprisingly leans to the jazzy side (composed by Michael Gibbs), providing a noirish vibe to be sure (the at-times harsh lighting does not hurt either), Woo actually originally set out to create some sort of unique cross between Dirty Harry and Bullitt (a self professed lover of Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen), and, if you amped the action up to eleven in both of these films, you’d have something along the lines of Hard-Boiled.

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail – no, not a Hardy Boys’ adventure, rather, another unique giallo, directed by Sergio Martino (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), a 1971 mystery thriller that may have more would-be stalkers than any other film in the annals of history. From a story by Eduardo Manzanos (icon Ernesto Gastaldi came in to build the screenplay, with Mazanos and Sauro Scavolini also getting credit), the twist-filled narrative pulls from both Alfred Hitchcock and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les diaboliques, as well as unbelievable real life stories that lined the newspapers . . . Martino imbuing it all with a tense, mile-a-minute pacing.