{"id":13999,"date":"2016-08-09T21:56:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T01:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13999"},"modified":"2016-11-18T12:23:12","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T17:23:12","slug":"be-appassionata-1974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13999","title":{"rendered":"BR: Appassionata (1974)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Appassionata1974\"Film<\/strong>: \u00a0Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Standard<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Twilight Time<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0May 10, 2016<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Erotica \/ Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A dentist’s staid life unravels as his fragile wife cracks, his teen daughter blossoms into a woman, and his ongoing affair with his daughter’s best friend intensifies.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Isolated Stereo Music Track \/\u00a0Theatrical Trailer \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a> and www.twilighttimemovies.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please note: this review contains some end spoilers. Additionally, the plot summary on Twilight Time’s sleeve by Rovi’s Jason Buchanan is actually for “The Most Beautiful Wife<\/a>,” a prior film starring Ornella Muti as a young woman who enters \u201cinto a loveless marriage of convenience,\u201d which is not the case in “Appassionata.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bernardo Bertolucci may not have created an imitable formula for the free-flowing erotic art film with Last Tango in Paris<\/strong> (1972), but he certainly aided in making audiences more appreciative of, if not hungry for further adventures of older men being teased by luscious temptresses, but Gianluigi Calderone\u2019s Appassionata<\/strong> takes things a little bit farther into the Wrong domain by having poppa Emilio (Gabriele Ferzetti) lusting not only for his daughters best bosom pal Nicola (cool and unemotive Eleonora Giorgi), but perhaps his own daughter Eugenia (Ornella Muti).<\/p>\n

Calderone structures the evolving \/ devolving relationship with Eugenia like a dance, with teasing glances, bursts of shocking behaviour, jealousy and confusion, and ultimately the Big Moment where the film\u2019s climax hinges on an evening\u2019s indiscretion that may or may not have been with a lover or an unintended moment of incest possibly coordinated by his own daughter.<\/p>\n

The key to this peculiar focus lies in Emilio\u2019s wife Elisa, played quite superbly by Valentina Cortese. A former aspiring concert pianist, Elisa had a massive mental crack-up leading to a sudden retirement from any public performing after a singular debut. Emilio fell in love with the pretty pianist and remains highly protective of her, and yet it\u2019s clear the family can\u2019t cope with her massive mood swings, mandating an eventual shuttering in a mental facility where she\u2019d receive more targeted care by professionals. In addition to being caregiver to a fragile wife, he\u2019s the father of a fantasy-filled teen daughter, a busy dentist, and a philanderer who sets up appointments with Nicola to ensure total privacy for their dalliance.<\/p>\n

Elisa is unaware of her husband\u2019s activities, but there are specific scenes in which Cortese elevates a marginal character into a tragic creature, almost giving legitimacy to Calderone\u2019s exploitive, gauzy, sordid drama. Her piano playing in the family parlor annoys little Eugenia, but it\u2019s her birthday party that really hammers home the daughter\u2019s total loathing for Elisa. Muti is well-cast as the always observant manipulator, but Eugenia remains a nothing more than a bratty, scheming teen \u2013 and wholly unsympathetic.<\/p>\n

As cold as Giorgi may be on film, her reticence to display broad emotions works for Nicola when she builds a marginal friendship with Elisa, partly seeded by her genuine sadness for a woman packed with culture, artistic skills, and genuine integrity who\u2019s treated like shit by her daughter. Admiration for her fine dress collection \u2013 shared in a special moment between the two women – is trounced when Eugenia barges in with her teen friends who yank and pull vintage clothes from racks and hangars, mocking Elisa as some kind of pathetic antique.<\/p>\n

And yet when Eugenia forces her mother to play old tunes in the parlor as birthday entertainment, the group hush as they notice Elisa\u2019s musical skills, even joining in song. Eugenia doesn\u2019t display any overt jealousy, but it\u2019s clear her mother\u2019s unintentional triumph needs to be quashed, so Eugenia plots a total breakdown designed to allow Eugenia to assume the family\u2019s matriarchal throne.<\/p>\n

Of course Eugenia is too young to govern her family, let alone be emotionally mature for a romance; along with playing up fake dalliances with boys while her father listens on a second phone, she creates strategic marks on her body to prove there are men (boys) out there wanting to possess the little vixen.<\/p>\n

Emilio thinks only of his daughter\u2019s pal Nicola and seems oblivious to Eugenia\u2019s lurid glances, but he is jealous and irritated by her emerging provocative behaviour, yet almost consistently gives in to her requests, as when she insists in trying on lingerie her father must buy as her desired birthday present. Emilio is annoyed and clearly doesn\u2019t want to see his baby girl in frilly unmentionables, and one night in a moment of jealous rage, he tears open her blouse, feeling no shame in having exposed her breasts. Moments later he carries little Eugenia back to her bedroom like a recreation of a father taking a sleepy child to bed, with daddy and his best little girl back on good terms, irrespective of the violence that just transpired.<\/p>\n

The chief problem with Appassionata<\/strong> is the script which seems like an idea that was developed, scaled back, retooled, and streamlined in the writing and final film editing stages: the father is initially annoyed by his daughter\u2019s sexual curiosity, then jealous, but also ignorant of her increasingly provocative gazes and physical behaviour at home.<\/p>\n

Nicola is a potential love interest, but Calderone dramatizes their first screen union as pure sleazy sexploitation: a dirty older man groping a teen who herself gets off on being doped up with Novocain while Emilio\u2019s assistant and waiting patients are seated beyond the room\u2019s entrance.<\/p>\n

Layered into the weak dialogue and spastic scene assemblies is Piero Piccioni\u2019s music which sometimes bears a similarity to his own masterwork for Radley Metzger\u2019s erotic masterpiece Camille 2000<\/strong> (1969). Elisa\u2019s moments on piano break up Piccioni\u2019s otherwise thematically repetitive score, and the music doesn\u2019t benefit from a lackluster film mix in both English dubbed and original Italian tracks (the latter subtitled in English).<\/p>\n

Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray sports a nice transfer of Calderone\u2019s soft-focus film, adding a crisp stereo isolated track of Piccioni\u2019s score (previously released by venerable Quartet Records as a 2-disc set).<\/p>\n

Julie Kirgo\u2019s essay elevates the film to the kind of art film Calderone perhaps had intended to make, and she cites his ties to Bertolucci (Calderone was assistant director on Bertolucci’s Partner<\/strong> and the \u201cAgonia\u201d segment in the anthology Love and<\/strong> Anger)\u00a0<\/strong>as a \u2018one-time assistant,\u2019 aware of Bertolucci\u2019s depictions of provocative behaviour onscreen, albeit in a more wet\u00a0 manner.<\/p>\n

In Appassionata<\/strong>, Calderone excelled in maintaining weird offsets between fidelity and infidelity, passion and cruelty, devotion and illicit hunger, but the film remains a spotty impression of an erotic drama. Most will likely gravitate to Appassionata<\/strong> for the boobery, but the real gem is Cortese’s portrait of a fragile mind affected by irreversible, tragic damage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernardo Bertolucci may not have created an imitable formula for the free-flowing erotic art film with Last Tango in Paris (1972), but he certainly aided in making audiences more appreciative of, if not hungry for further adventures of older men being teased by luscious temptresses, but Gianluigi Calderone\u2019s Appassionata takes things a little bit farther into the Wrong domain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4567,4566,4565,4564,694,4568],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3DN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13999"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14747,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13999\/revisions\/14747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}