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| 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
