What is marketed as an erotic mystery starts with a kind of a beauty contest between half-naked young women in masks, watched by a peeping Tom of a producer through a hole in a wall. Gradually we realize that the women were competing for a job of a sex slave, not for a lucrative position of a highly paid porn star. (Lucrative for those poor Ukrainian girls, of course, who only have their beauty to sell in a country destroyed by the fresh winds of the collapsing Communism). Giuseppe Tornatore’s take on white slavery and human trafficking is one eye-popper of a movie, action packed and blood chilling from the first minute to the last, until the viewer is awakened from this hauntingly beautiful nightmare, and ready to ask stupid questions. If she was able to take a lover on a side, and received a gift of a cell phone from her tormentor, AND spoke perfect Italian, why didn’t she try to end the torture by talking to the compassionate cops, or rather carabineri? Why did she make one dumb mistake after another while she showed a high IQ in so many life-threatening situations, and is portrayed on screen by an obviously intelligent and highly talented actress (Xenia Rappoport)? There is only one answer to those questions. Tornatore, who wrote and directed the film—a maker of Cinema Paradiso and Pure Formality among other masterpieces, does not want you to think while watching his artwork, which closely resembles grim flicks of the post-Soviet filmmakers, powerfully drawn to cinematic sex and violence after decades of abstinence. Maestro Tornatore wants you to FEEL. Raw emotion is what the film emanates and evokes, with the talented cast, moody yet precise cinematography, and always-brilliant music by Ennio Morricone.
There is no wonder The Unknown Woman won five Davids (Italian Oscars), and two major prizes at the Moscow Film Fest. Opens July 25 at the Opera Plaza Cinema, SF and Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. For more information, visit http://theunknownwoman.com
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