L'imbalsamatore (2002) Reviews

• Eerily beautiful, never obvious

  Asa_Nisi_Masa22005-04-02

  "The Embalmer" (which is what the title translates as) is, in a sentence, about Peppino, a middle-aged Neapolitan taxidermist of stunted growth (verging on dwarfhood) who employs a good-looking young assistant he soon becomes obsessed with. Furthermore, Peppino has Camorra connections (the Camorra is Naples's equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia) and is employed by the Neapolitan mobsters to sew drugs in and out of their excellent cadavers. With its superb cinematography, photography, soundtrack and imagery (some of the scenes featuring dead, stuffed animals in the lab are unforgettably eerie), the film will be appreciated by anyone who loves a well-scripted, steady but confidently-paced, subtle little thriller that's never a crowd-pleaser. The sense of impending danger is always very strong and real in the viewer's mind, though it never really lashes into sensationalist, gratuitous violence. In fact there's next to no violence or blood in this film and not one single Tarantinesque, gun-waving shouting match between mobsters scene: in fact you hardly ever see a gun in the film. In L'Imbalsamatore, anger IMPLODES and is the stronger and more threatening for it, and the human element is far more prominent than the formal crime element. Though obviously, its organised crime subplot (which you only ever glance at sideways) is pivotal in heightening the sense of threat in the film. But it never crowds the film, which simply isn't ABOUT organised crime. L'Imbalsamatore boasts a psychologically credible theme of obsessive love and attraction which would make Fatal Attraction look hollow and fake. It's also never distasteful and never, ever makes cheap use of the main character's semi-disability as a shock element. Also, unlike the crass Michael Douglas movie, L'Imbalsamatore's obsessive lover is vulnerable and human, as only someone who constantly holds his bleeding heart in his hand can be. But when said obsessive lover starts resenting that the object of his adoration has had the emotional upper hand for too long, things can get REALLY scary. This is especially true when the spurned lover, any spurned lover has major Camorra connections, and the chestful of treasures he's been so selflessly offering his beloved is being dismissively waved away for the umpteenth time! You really get a sense of all the characters playing with fire in L'Imbalsamatore, which is why it succeeds in creating a sense of suspense which just never lets up (and yet never climaxing when you expect it to). The film is also invested with genuine humanity and is never judgemental or moralistic. It moves us to sympathy towards the obsessive and love-lorn character, who despite his physical appearance and potentially lethal reactions, is invested with true pathos and dignity. His tears are bitter and no different from those of any other lover, no matter how good, handsome or psychologically healthy. And that's precisely why he's so scary. Please watch l'Imbalsamatore: it really deserves more international acclaim.

• Under the skin

  PAolo-102005-03-21

  Definitely not a movie for everyone. I looked for this movie immediately after seeing the most recent Garrone feature, Primo Amore (First Love) currently in the Festival circuit. The structure of the movies is non surprisingly very similar: a love story that transcends understanding and plays with common notions of relationship and sexuality, eventually trespassing into obsession. Again Garrone starts from a true story, but tries to make something universal, abstracting it from time (no modern technology) and space. The geography of the action is clear (well, at least to Italian) but the beautiful photography transforms the landscape into chiaroscuro paintings of foggy uncertainty. Ernesto Mahieux is the perfect choice for the central character-- a strong although somewhat physically stunted, madly in love protagonist. This is one movie that is difficult to classify: it's not a thriller, and very few will consider this a love story, although it borrows elements from both genres to construct something unique that gets under the skin of the spectator. Think Fellini and Lynch, but without the gratuitous weirdness. A little gem, for the few who will get it.

• The taxidermist

  jotix1002006-06-19

  Peppino, the taxidermist at the center of this story, is a man who nature has not endowed with many physical attributes. He is a short homely man, who might repel many people. Yet, what he lacks in stature, and good looks, he compensates with a larger than life personality. When he first spots the handsome Valerio, he decides he wants to see more of him. Valerio, who is working as a cook, is offered a job by Peppino, even though he is not experienced in that line of work. What he doesn't realize is that Peppino, in addition of stuffing animals is also an expert in stuffing dead bodies with drugs. He works closely with the local mafia boss. Valerio and Peppino develop an easy relationship, but the younger man doesn't have a clue about the little man's affection for him. Peppino, who knows he can't force himself on Valerio, gathers prostitutes to go to bed with the two of them because that is the only way he can be with Valerio without coming out to him. When Valerio meets Deborah, the dynamics between the two friends change; Peppino senses it, but he can't do anything to separate them. Deborah, who becomes pregnant, proposes to go home to Cremona and Valerio accepts. Their lives appear to be getting in the right track until one day Peppino appears at her parents' home. It's clear by now that Valerio must make a decision that will change his life forever. Director Matteo Garrone, who also contributed to the screen play, shows he knows how to deal with this sordid situation with great taste and he is never in the viewer's face. By presenting the main character as physical handicapped and the object of his desires as a handsome young man, Mr. Matteo achieved a coup because of the possibilities in the strange relationship, aggravated by a third party, in this case, by Deborah. The best thing in the film is Ernesto Mahieux, who as Peppino gives one of the best performances in an Italian film in recent memory. His Peppino is a complicated man who is trapped in a body that no one wants. Yet, his need for love is something no one can satisfy. Valerio Foglia Manzillo is awkward as the handsome man he is portraying. In part, the character, the way Mr. Foglia Manzillo played it, makes sense because Valerio's loyalties play a trick on him. Elizabetta Rocchetti appears as Deborah, the woman who is able to get Valerio away from what she senses is a threat to her own happiness. "The Taxidermist", is a great collaboration between its director, Mr. Garrone, and his star, the larger than life, Ernesto Mahieux.

• A Deeply Unsettling and Merciless Experience

  jzappa2010-03-25

  Matteo Garrone's deeply morbid subjective reflection from Italy is an insightful musing of two characters, and then a third which works as an agitator. The short man finds the tall man at the zoo, where he is watching a vulture. The short guy, named Peppino, is a sweet talker. He's about 50, balding, under 5 feet tall. The tall guy, named Valerio, is a head turner, about 20, attractive, over 6 feet tall. As they struggle to recall where they've met before, the perspective periodically shifts from the humans to the vulture, a bird that survives by detecting dead meat. The picture is mangled, the sound is dampened, and we get an inverted look of the bird blinking its eyes. Valerio says animals are his strongest interest. Funny, says Peppino, they're also his. He is a taxidermist. Peppino, with a light manner and a genial grin, is a beast of prey who likes to entice young men with his money and favors. Valerio, who is told extraordinary things about his Adonis-like looks, is not very smart, and likes to be charmed. Peppino works by artifice, taking Valerio to clubs and hiring hookers for parties; the two friends end up in bed with the girls, and Valerio doesn't see that for Peppino, the girls are the snare and he is the sitting duck. The Embalmer is adept at camouflaging its real essence and rattling us with the shifts of the plot. Among the movie's charades are not all overstated, but eerily implicit. Does Peppino see himself as a homosexual, or as a philanderer who likes good buddies and is open-minded in bed? Does Valerio know Peppino wants him? Does Valerio favor Peppino's money or Deborah's abundant sexual skill? Is Valerio totally retarded? Twice he infuriates Deborah by standing her up; he continues go along with Peppino's insistence upon just one more time. Is it a defect or an advantage of the film that we don't always know what occurs? Another intended question I think, as we ponder over Valerio, a babe in the woods who, when he's not with the one he loves, loves the one he's with, if he loves at all. This incredibly unsettling and implacable experience takes place largely in Italian beach towns, but in a gray season, against chilled, steeled skies. The sea is nonetheless far away and dejected, and Garrone's images bleed the life out of some scenes. The music is a sobbing, deeply haunting jazz abstraction. This is not a comedy or a sexploitation pic, but a prurient matter concerning two obsessed pursuants and their prey, whose physicality may have made life such a breeze for him that he never got the dexterity to live it. It may sound absurd that a balding old midget could seduce an apparently heterosexual young Apollo out of the arms of an insatiable woman, but after Deborah checks Peppino out, she knows she has to take him seriously. What the short man wants, he goes after with skill, guile…and desperate longing. And it's compelling to watch him maneuver.

• Visions of a haunted, disquieting Italy

  Chris Knipp2003-10-10

  Matteo Garrone's `The Embalmer' (L'Imbalsamatore) evokes a troubling Diana Arbus Italy that's Fellini without the charm, Antonioni without the chic angst. (Clearly, it's just pure Garrone.) This moody, compelling film focuses (to add one more famous filmmaker name) on a Fassbinder relationship of hopeless repressed gay love. The desolate coastal spaces of the Campania region and the foggy inland environs of Cremona blend with a haunting jazz soundtrack to evoke a decade-old story of gay awakening and desperation, Patrice Chéreau's desire-ridden early film, L'Homme Blessé (1983). You can argue whether L'Imbalsamatore is film noir: it's based on a police blotter item about a deadly Roman love triangle and has gangland crime, double-crosses and a femme fatale, but Garrone has created a slow, creepy character study that leads through initially cheery but off-kilter events into more flesh-crawling developments that drift into final sudden violence. It's been called homophobic, and indeed the gay person isn't stable or admirable: he's a lonely dwarf with a hopeless concealed passion and crafty subterfuges that lead into spooky delusions. But the movie isn't so much about sexuality at all as about repressed desire and confused intentions. To bring yet another director into play in discussing this wholly original movie, the dwarf suggests David Lynch and some of the interiors and their lighting indeed suggest a southern Italian Blue Velvet. Peppino, a little fifty-ish taxidermist, finds handsome, naive young Valerio in the Naples zoo and lures him by offering an inflated salary, into giving up his job as a cook and becoming his apprentice. (Picture the extra-tall Valerio walking next to tiny squat Peppino: that's Diane Arbus.) Peppino has extra dough because he moonlights for the Mafia sewing drugs into corpses. The sweet Valerio likes learning about taxidermy and is too good natured and simple to see the hidden nature of Peppino's interest, though even Peppino's Mafia boss sees it and warns Peppino of its danger. To justify being close to Valerio in bed Peppino arranges joint orgies with call girls. That keeps Valerio out too late and his brother kicks him out of the house, so he moves in with Peppino. Peppino hides his Mafia connection as well as his attraction from Valerio, even when he takes Valerio along on a Mafia job in Cremona. While waiting for Peppino in a Cremona hotel, Valerio meets Deborah, a volatile young woman with surgically enhanced lips, and he and she trick Peppino into taking her along when they return home. For a while the three play around together and Deborah dresses Valerio in a nightgown and puts lipstick on Peppino. Eventually Valerio wants to move out and live with Deborah, who's now pregnant with their child, and that doesn't suit Peppino at all. Though Valerio remains ambivalent to the end, Peppino and Deborah grow too sour toward each other for the triangle to continue. The young couple goes off to Cremona to get jobs and live with Deborah's parents and wait for the child to be born. Peppino eventually comes after them and stalks Valerio, introducing himself to the parents as Valerio's `uncle.' Ernesto Manieux as Peppino exhibits a bottomless, maniacal charm throughout that is both smooth and menacing. Valerio Foglia Manzillo as Valerio is so tall and so athletically handsome that he seems peculiar too, especially in constant proximity to Manieux. L'Imbalsamatore is about transformation and confusion. Sometimes Peppino is seen from far below and seems gigantic. He's physically unattractive and can be creepy but he's also charming, sociable and charismatic. Valerio goes from cook to taxidermist to waiter. He is a devastating seducer or childlike waif: his powerful physique is dangerous because the brain is unfocused. He's putty in the hands of Peppino. There's something of `Mice and Men's' Lennie in him, which comes out toward the end. Peppino's diminutive stature limits him, but he manipulates what power he has with consummate skill. Right at the end, in Cremona, he lures Valerio away from Deborah, gets him drunk, and tempts him to run off – where? To Cuba or Africa; Peppino has him mesmerized into wanting to escape Cremona's landlocked fogs and go off with him almost anywhere to get away from the monkey-suit uniform he wears at a hotel, the constricting responsibilities of fatherhood, and the generally stifling bourgeois scene at Deborah's family's house, symbolized by crunching the identical piece of toast every morning across the table from her father, with the mother coming like clockwork to pour the coffee and milk from two opposing kettles. Garrone's Italy is a haunted place, drab and commonplace yet unlike any other. His scenes, which use a lot of ultra close-ups of the faces, are uniformly compelling: the dangerous tensions of the love triangle keep them focused. The various sequences in which Peppino tries to become intimate with Valerio skirt the edge between jaunty and flesh-crawly. The dialogue seems hasty, natural, improvised (unlike traditional Italian films, this has a live sound track with no post-dubbing). It gives a sense of convincing lies, mindless formulas that just get by or seem calming but cause confusion, mimicking an understanding that is not there. Background sounds are skillfully and subtly used. One has the sense of being in the hands of an exceptionally original director who knows well how to use the rituals and longeurs of Italian life to his own special storytelling ends. In the disquieting, manic final sequence Peppino wields a huge pistol, which he talks about as if it were an unmanageable, unpredictable woman. His desperation has made him deranged and dangerous but Valerio also seems to have gone very quietly and therefore more frighteningly crazy. The ending is stunning but inevitable.