Tame but entertaining Spanish/Italian thriller
24 January 2007
A woman leaves her husband and immediately takes up with another man . But her new beau has a strange friend that he knew from the "war", he and also seems to have some kind of relationship with the beautiful bisexual woman next door. Meanwhile her estranged husband is still lurking around, and someone seems to be trying to kill her.

This rather odd giallo came out after Dari Argento had set the template for the genre with "Bird with Crystal Plumage". Strangely though, it seems to be a throw-back to the earlier Umberto Lenzi/Carroll Baker gialli like "Paranoia" or "A Quiet Place to Kill". The beginning is almost unforgivably slow with romantic longueurs of very beautiful idle rich people frolicking on the beautiful Cote de Azure beach while 60's Europop tunes play on the soundtrack (the movie often resembles a more staid French thriller like "La Piscine" than a Spanish/Italian gialli) . The plot, when it finally kicks in, is actually pretty good, but this movie is not as deleriously stylized nor is it anywhere near as violent as your typical giallo of that era. And it's tame even compared to the earlier gialli as far as sex goes--there's a long, ridiculous scene where the lead actress goes topless but the view is always obstructed by something (which resembles a running gag in "Austin Powers" more than anything else). It's hard to believe that three years later this same Spanish director would do the uber-sleazy "Beyond Erotica".

Still, tame does not necessarily translate to bad. This film has some good twists to it and is pretty entertaining when it get's going.
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