First, I must say I`m a big fan of the recently deceased Guido Crepax`s work and have readed and studied most of it, including the storyline Baba Yaga for the Valentina saga. Just after I have seen the movie for the first time, I´m a little perplexed on how wrong an adaptation it turned out to be. Farina (in "Valentina and I", included in the DVD) tells he was a very good friend of Crepax himself, he really seemed to understand the linguistical narrative that Crepax does in his fumettos, and he had the firm intention of doing the best adaptation posible of the Baba Yaga storyline (trying to avoid bad results as Modesty Blaise and Barbarella). Then, how in hell has the movie ended being so bad (as those same movies he refers to)? While there are some interesting aproximations (the photomontage used directly from a layout of the fumetto) and intertext to the work of Crepax (some pages of Bianca are readed by Valentina and Arno, or the including of Crepax himself as a character) the feeling of it all its just wrong. First, athmosphere is not that of a terror movie as is promoted, but is more like a campy pop sixties feel, including music and the cinematography. Second, Isabelle de Funes was the worst actress they could have choosen to play Valentina: she´s not sexy nor ludic nor naive; she inspires boredom, not seduction. Tough the plot is faithfull (most part of it, anyway, Rembrant, the long time and true Valentina`s lover, is replaced by Arno Treves, a existing character in the saga but from another storyline), it is rendered in the most boring and unimaginative way a director could. I conclude, that tough Farina understand´s the linguistic mechanics of Crepax`s fumetto, he is a bad director and can`t help it (prove is, that he only did two feature films, this being his second). R
Review of Baba Yaga
