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Radiance: The Sunday Woman (1975) - Reviewed
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Courtesy of Radiance |
British boutique label Radiance is just starting to make
their presence known in the United States blu-ray community with their deluxe
releases of Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and the upcoming
world disc premiere of Kinji Fukusaku’s Yakuza Graveyard. Setting their sights on Italian directors
including but not limited to the renowned Elio Petri of The Working Class
Goes to Heaven, their most recent person of interest is Don Camillo film
series réalisateur Luigi Comencini and his sardonic social satire The Sunday
Woman. Springboarding from elements
of the luxurious whodunit murder mystery and just a hint of giallo, The
Sunday Woman starts out like a thriller before veering into snarky
critiques of Italy’s upper echelon ala Elio Petri’s The Assassin
(incidentally also starring legendary actor Marcello Mastroianni) in the
leading role.
Handsy piggish sexist architect Garrone (Claudio Gora) is
out and about Rome one day, leering at and groping women every chance he gets
when he mysteriously turns up brutally murdered with a plaster phallic object
ala A Clockwork Orange, leaving haute socialite Anna Carla Dosio
(the incomparable Jaqueline Bisset) and her gay friend Massimo (Jean-Louis
Trintignant) as the prime suspects. As Commissioner
Salvatore Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni) mounts an investigation into the
crime, utilizing the conventions of the whodunit Agatha Christie murder
mystery, the film becomes a blistering critique of the social hierarchies dominating
the Turin region while deconstructing the conventions of the whodunit to offer
up something closer to uncategorizable sociopolitical farce.
Based on the novel of the same name by Carlo Fruttero and
Franco Lucentini with additional screenwriting by Agenore Incrocci and Furio
Scarpelli of Big Deal on Madonna Street and The Organizer, The
Sunday Woman with its deliberately impenetrable title and nebulous motives
is a wry observation of clashing classes with elements of the convoluted film
noir labyrinthine narrative. As more
mercurial characters and double crossings start to crop up, the film starts
becoming more and more like Mike Hodges’ Pulp where the conventions
themselves start becoming subverted and it takes on an increasingly detached
tone. When it isn’t defying user
expectations, The Sunday Woman also rests on the screen glamour of its two
leads Bisset and Mastroianni who are simply dripping with sex appeal.
Lensed by the legendary cinematographer Luciano Tovoli of Michelangelo
Antonioni’s The Passenger and Dario Argento’s Suspiria, the
composed-for-television fullscreen dramedy (also offered in the cinematographer’s
preferred theatrical ratio of 1.85:1) looks splendid. As with most Italian thriller/loosely giallo
fare, the film is a scenic picturesque tapestry of Italian luxury and high
lifestyle, soaking up the glamour of the worlds lived in by the
characters. And where to begin with the
score by the man who needs no introduction, Ennio Morricone. One of (if not THE) greatest Italian film
composers who ever lived, Morricone’s score for The Sunday Woman is laced
with loose notes of the Hitchcockian thriller while also offering up Jazzy maneuvers
that offsets the tone of the action. Bisset
and Mastroianni are at the top of their game playing off of one another’s larger-than-life
screen presence while Jean-Louis Trintignant bravely navigates the
then-controversial waters of portraying homosexuality onscreen.
Distributed by 20th Century Fox’s Italian branch, The
Sunday Woman like Pulp before it is difficult to pin your finger
on. A tonally astray playing field of
double-crossings, murders and one-up gamesmanship, the film presents a
straightforward thriller from the outset only to use that skeleton for a
trenchant, incisive chipping away at the glossy surface features of the bourgeoisie. A movie content to put its feet up and fold
its arms behind the head, the film’s languid pacing and almost carefree
attitude has more of the markings of an absurdist joke than a tense crime
thriller. The kind of film only a director with such
a deft understanding of the tightrope balance between comedy and drama could’ve
made, sometimes channeling both at once, The Sunday Woman is ostensibly
a genre film that proceeds to subvert and upend your understanding of what the
genre really has to offer. While it
doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, it is a charming bit of dark irony
whose uncharted comic weathers are only just catching wind outside of Italy
now.
--Andrew Kotwicki