On her way home, a fashion model, Gloria, saw a man fought against a woman and killed her in a strangely noisy room in the old villa where a German Countess named Greta Stella used to live. But when the police Commissioner, who is crazy about fishing, and his dull assistant go to the problematic villa in the next morning, the villa is perceived to have been empty for twenty years and there seems to be nothing criminal left. And then Gloria asks help from a playboy-typed psychiatrist, Gianmarco Contini, who is one of the eight joint-owners of the problematic villa... In the second half of the 1980s', the Italian film-makers made what is called Giallo-with-fashion-models films, and this is the one of them. And in a sense, this is the most unique one partly because this has something common with LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH; as far as the visualness and auditoryness are concerned, the heroine, Gloria, is passive. Whatever she does, it has no effect upon her being passive. Similarly(and badly), the Commissioner's and the psychiatrist's actions have no influence upon her passiveness. And furthermore, this film has more unique element; the hypnotherapy which indeed seems to be the central element of the film. Unfortunately it is the most problematic element of the film, too; Dr.Contini puts Gloria under hypnosis many times, but he doesn't and can't make anything meaningful at all. And therefore it should be said in the most parts of the film the hypnotherapy is nothing but the decorative. But in the last sequence putting the illogically-identified murderer under hypnosis on only one occasion solves the whole case with unbelievable and unacceptable immediateness and simplisticness of his-or-her exhibitionistic self-destructiveness. And therefore it can be said in the most parts of the film every character badly wastes his-or-her time with an unbelievably simply trick in the old villa.(Actually, the trick is definitely too simple for anyone who goes there not to be realised.) This is highly problematic because all characters' wasting their time with their meaningless activities can be nothing but the audiences' wasting their time with the very film. Indeed every character in this film is too childish, or even too foolish, to be satisfactorily realistic and therefore the film per se cannot be satisfactorily realistic. Or more precisely, almost every scene of this film is as meaninglessly fluctuating and/or as meaninglessly imperious as if they were not under any of the characters' control at all.
Review of Fashion Crimes
