{"id":2784,"date":"2011-11-25T16:15:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T16:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2784"},"modified":"2011-11-25T16:17:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T16:17:16","slug":"submission-of-a-woman-by-alessandro-lucidi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/reviews\/submission-of-a-woman-by-alessandro-lucidi\/","title":{"rendered":"Submission of a Woman, by Alessandro Lucidi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Submission<\/a>
Daniela Poggi in Submission of a Woman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

aka Al calar della sera
\n1992
\n91 mins
\nItaly
\nProduced by Paolo Lucidi for P.C. Coletti Productions
\nDirector: Alessandro\u00a0 Lucidi
\nStory & screenplay: Alessandro\u00a0 Lucidi
\nCinematography: Beppe\u00a0 Maccari
\nMusic: Claudio\u00a0 Rovagna
\nEditor: Maria\u00a0 Donolis
\nArt director: Simonetta\u00a0 Vitelli
\nCast: Daniela\u00a0 Poggi (Luisa), Gianluca\u00a0 Favilla (Giorgio), Paolo\u00a0 Lorimer (the psychopath), Cecilia\u00a0 Luci (the child), Andrea\u00a0 Ward, Anna\u00a0 Orso<\/p>\n

This <\/strong>is a (very) late period Italian thriller from 1992 and directed by Alessandro Lucidi, son of the better known Maurizio.\u00a0 The early 90s was a pretty dismal period for Italian popular cinema: although films were being produced, they tended to have low budgets and were made with broadcasting on television rather than cinema in mind.\u00a0 They also tended to suffer from poor scriptwriting and acting, recycling old formulas with very little in the way of innovation or style.\u00a0 So, although Submission of a Woman <\/strong>isn\u2019t a particularly good film, it’s certainly not the worst of its type and time and stands comparison with the kinds of works that directors such as Lamberto Bava or Umberto Lenzi were producing under similar circumstances.<\/p>\n

Luisa (Daniela Poggi), an actress, is getting weary of the sexpot roles she’s customarily offered, especially now that she’s in her thirties, married to Giorgio (Gianluca Favilla) and has a kid.\u00a0 She’s also sick and tired of receiving phone calls from a crank caller, who insists on ringing whenever she’s alone and hanging on the line without saying anything.\u00a0 And her problems are about to get much worse: the caller is actually a psychopath who has already murdered at least one unfortunate girl, and he’s settled on her as being his next victim.<\/p>\n

One weekend, just before Luisa and Giorgio are supposed to go away on a romantic holiday, he attacks.\u00a0 Giorgio doesn’t last long, but Luisa manages to lock herself in the house.\u00a0 Unfortunately the phones have been cut off, so there’s no way of calling for help, and making a break for it is made impossible by the fact that she still has her baby to protect.<\/p>\n

More of a slasher movie than a giallo \u2013 there’s no mystery element to the plot at all \u2013 much of the second half of the film is made up of a protracted cat and mouse game between Luisa and her crackpot attacker.\u00a0 Some of it’s simply ludicrous – it’s one of those films where someone who knows where they’re going and is running seems to move more slowly than a pursuer who’s both on unfamiliar territory and walking \u2013 and the dialogue leaves a little to be desired; ‘I swear that if you leave I won’t sue you…’, for instance, is a novel line to say when you’re being held at knife-point by a psychopath.<\/p>\n

\"Daniela<\/a>
Daniela Poggi in Submission of a Woman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s little in the way of violence, but it becomes increasingly sleazy as the running time progresses.\u00a0 Nothing like the home invasion films of the 1970s, productions like La settima donna <\/strong>and Late Night Trains <\/strong>which had a much more gritty, raw feel; but there’s a lengthy rape sequence which goes on a little too long and in which the camera lingers a little too longingly over Ms Poggi’s naked flesh.\u00a0 Bizarrely, given this \u2013 not to mention a weird flashback that implies she actually enjoyed the experience \u2013 it does a complete double take at the end and comes out as a wannabe treatise on small town prejudice and rebuttal of the opinion that, to paraphrase, just because a woman is wearing tight trousers she’s inviting every slime-ball in the vicinity to have sex with her.<\/p>\n

Lucidi does his best, using the claustrophobic setting pretty well and generating a fair amount of tension.\u00a0 A respected editor, he also directed two other films, a pair of sexy comedies from the early eighties called La maestra di sci <\/strong>and Il marito vacanza<\/strong> (both 81).\u00a0 Stylistically, his work very much resembles that of Lamberto Bava, and if he\u2019d have started his directorial career twenty years earlier he might have had a chance of achieving something more substantial.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as it is Submission of a Woman <\/strong>has the dull, flat look and dismal music (seemingly inspired by Angelo Badalamenti\u2019s soundtrack for Twin Peaks<\/strong>) that so characterised Italian productions of its time, and it comes across much like a less respectable version of those dull TV slasher movies that were made in the wake of Halloween<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As for the cast, it\u2019s really a two hander between Daniele Poggi and Paolo Lorimer, who are both actually rather good.\u00a0 Poggi, a familiar performer since her debut in The Gestapo\u2019s Last Orgy<\/strong>, looks a bit like a more mumsy Jamie Lee Curtis, and she manages to bring some character to her part.\u00a0 Lorimer was a new face to me, and a pasty, goggle eyed face at that, but he\u2019s actually been in a few films over the years, including The Sin eater <\/strong>(2003) and Fade to Black <\/strong>(2006).\u00a0 A couple of other interesting names also crop up in the crew: assistant director was Edoardo Margheriti, Antonio\u2019s son, and Diego Spataro is credited as \u2018capo macchinista\u2019; whether this is the same Diego Spataro who also produced films by Joe D\u2019Amato and Demofilo Fidani is unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a (very) late period Italian thriller from 1992 and directed by Alessandro Lucidi, son of the better known Maurizio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[954,955,91],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2900,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions\/2900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}