Così dolce… così perversa (1969)
49KCosì dolce… così perversa: Directed by Umberto Lenzi. With Carroll Baker, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Erika Blanc, Horst Frank. Jean, a rich Parisian socialite, comes to the aid of a frightened young woman (Nicole) who is under the domineering control of her abusive boyfriend, Klaus. Although married, Jean develops a romantic relationship with Nicole. However, he may have gotten himself involved in more than he bargained for.
“It seems that prior to Dario Argentou0026#39;s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage that normal template for gialli was the u0026#39;mystery amongst devious peopleu0026#39; rather than the u0026#39;loads of babes being sliced upu0026#39;. This is yet another one of those films, with a rather low body count (two!).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eJean (heu0026#39;s a fanny rat, but hard to like, because heu0026#39;s French), is a rich playboy who is not getting any of his wife (Erika Blanc – she looks like David Bowie), so looks for other avenues to explore. When the film opens, heu0026#39;s banging his mateu0026#39;s wife, but soon he discovers a new blonde has moved into the apartment above his.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThereu0026#39;s something strange going with this new blonde too, because Jean is hearing the scraping of furniture and what sounds like someone being slapped around, but when he goes to the front door of his new neighbour, no one answers. When he does finally get to meet her she claims that her boyfriend Klaus loves beating her up and stuff.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSoon the two fall in love (queue montage!) much to the dismay of Blanc and the delight of Klaus, and itu0026#39;s roughly about the halfway mark that the twists start happening so Iu0026#39;ll stop there. Needless to say that one character goes from being vulnerable to evil, allegiances changes again and again and the hippy vibe of the late sixties shines through loud and clear.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, Lenzi seems to have had a vision of the state of Italian film ten years later and injected the film with scenes that make no sense whatsoever, for instance the credits sequence. Jean drives about with a rifle in his car and we get flashes of one of his lovers but this has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Plus, Carrol Baker has a velvet lined cabinet in her apartment full of instruments of torture. This has nothing to do with anything either.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOn the other side, Lenzi also injects an amazingly high amount of style into the film too, what with an early example of the use of primary colours (soon to be a trend in the gialli) – thereu0026#39;s one scene thatu0026#39;s stands out when Jean is forced to snog Carrol Baker while someone keeps changing the lighting to various colours, Nicely done.”