Radiance Films: Weak Spot (1975) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Radiance Films

Just a couple of years after the ultra-gross transgressive Italian shocker La Grande Bouffe, French actor Michel Piccoli and Italian comedian Ugo Tognazzi reunited on Bavarian based writer-director Peter Fleischmann’s 1975 French-Italian-German co-produced thriller Weak Spot.  Making its worldwide blu-ray premiere via Radiance Films in a new 4K restoration, the Grecian set film follows in the footsteps of such searing Italian Eurocrime cinema as Elio Petri’s The Assassin or Vittorio Salerno’s criminally underrated No, the Case is Happily Resolved.  Playing on the screen personas of Piccoli and Tognazzi, Fleischmann’s scenic yet paranoid cat-and-mouse thriller as well as portrait of a brutal 1974 Grecian regime finds itself deconstructing elements of the spy thriller with arresting cinematography and a rousing score by Ennio Morricone.

 
A seemingly innocent playboy holiday representative stationed in Greece named Georgis (Ugo Tognazzi) is out and about when he is abruptly apprehended by two secret agents including a nameless investigator played by Michel Piccoli.  Suspected of being a member of an underground resistance, he is taken by the agents to Athens via motor vehicle where some bumps happen along the way such as the car breaking down.  From here it becomes a bit of a road movie, a bit of a character study where we start questioning whether or not our hero Georgis really is as harmless as he presents himself to be and amid trying to woo young female tourists vacationing Georgis makes a few feeble attempts at escape.  Over time however, it becomes clearer Georgis is being set up to be a fall guy.

 
Something of a quasi-Cold War thriller, Hitchcockian right down to the casting of Michel Piccoli from Hitchcock’s Topaz to an overarching sense of fatalism permeating the proceedings and storyline, Peter Fleischmann’s loose adaptation of Antonis Samarakis’ novel is almost deconstructive in how little information we’re given regarding the politics of the case or the nature of the supposed crime being committed.  While on some levels a bit of a North by Northwest thriller, the way it unfolds isn’t exactly Godardian but it definitely takes an unconventional approach including but not limited to scenes of the principal characters wandering around searching for a working car as Suspiria cinematographer Luciano Tovoli’s camera pans across Grecian bays.  Athens has never looked so lush, much as directors like Nico Mastorakis tried and/or failed.

 
Mostly however this is an actors’ movie with much of the action resting on the shoulders of Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli who share many scenes together merely conversing about their lives and whether or not existentially they’re actually people or just pawns in a greater sociopolitical game.  Mario Adorf as Michel’s colleague simply known as The Manager provides a fun supporting character to the Tognazzi/Piccoli dynamic and Dimos Starenios makes a stunning turn as a fascistic police superintendent.  Other than Georgis, no one is given names in this universe, only titles, suggesting nobody really has any independence or autonomy.  Everyone and everything is puppeteering in service to a thinly veiled notion of ‘a greater good’. 

 
Cynical and sardonic yet told in a leisurely pace with refreshing performances from the two leads, Weak Spot is a taut and somewhat claustrophobic “promenade” through Greece as both genre thriller and expression of existential woes.  Featuring Piccoli and Tognazzi onscreen together again following the vulgar and darkly hilarious La Grande Bouffe and cementing Peter Fleischmann as one of the premier emerging directors of the German New Wave, this underrated Eurocrime thriller will delight genre fans while also offering up a curiously apolitical study of oppressive regimes and the key players navigating them.  Radiance Films as always produced a lovely package with their trademark OBI spines, reversible sleeve art and limited-edition booklet featuring essay writing from Kat Ellinger.  As a newcomer to Fleischmann, it was a solid if not offbeat venture, a deconstructive slice of political paranoia without naming names. 

--Andrew Kotwicki