User Reviews

In the city of Rome, Mirko Reggiani is not only a university student who can't happily graduate from the university but also an amateur and only one detective of MARLOV & CO. One day he meets a beautiful fair lady in a department store and falls immediately in love with her, but his best female friend hinders him. Soon, in a rather strange way, Mirko meets the lady, who is actually an unhappy housewife named Vera Grimaldi, again. Unfortunately it is not a happy reunion; both Mirko and Vera are deeply and almost independently trapped in a twisted web of vicious crime... This Italian film is influenced by the notorious BASIC INSTINCT, only in point that there is a crucial key in the middle of the carnal-activity-with-homicide. Actually, in the prologue of this film, which is a carnal rather than love sequence, the audience can fragmentally see and hear the criminal, but hardly understands what is precisely going on there and therefore hardly knows who the problematic criminal is. And interestingly enough, the sequence of this film is structurally much more complex than that of BASIC INSTINCT, and it shows the criminal both visually and extra-visually, rather than simply audio-visually. And except for the limited influence of the US film, this Italian film is nothing but a Giallo which has characteristic beauties, twisted web of vicious crime with double crosses, Euro-tasted music (by the popular Southern-Italian musical group, AGRICANTUS), and surprisingly identified murderer. And it should be added that the Polish beauty, Katarina Vasilissa, provides not a few nude scenes. Still it seems to be difficult to say this film is a typically Giallish one; in short, this 1998 film is too modern to be typical mainly because of the simple fact that the hero, Mirko Reggiani, is not only long-haired but also anti-social kid who always eats junk food and habitually plays with his favourite yo-yo. Consequently, although this is not particularly bad film, it seems to be inevitable that the director's 1995 Giallo masterpiece, LA STRANA STORIA DI OLGA "O" is much better than this a little over-modernised one.