I watched this on RAI Storia tonight. And got the taste of real cinema.
First off, this is the fruit of a weird year. 1981. The 70s are over, but no one yet knows what the 80s will be like. And on a technical level, things are raw. Maybe intentionally to some degree, but also because this kind of low budget filmmaking has yet to reach cleaner video and audio. This one is dubbed, the dialogues are not recorded live.
The story is clean cut and eternal, with almost no unknowns. The elements are there, some highly credible (a young woman's lust for excitement), some not so (like, how our protagonist can make peace with leaving her daughter behind).
Clio Goldsmith looks amazing. I thought I must have seen her before, but she has starred in so few movies that I couldn't make sure. I also got the sensation that, at least one notable character from the many adventures of Dylan Dog could have been based off of her looks... What a woman!
Given the IMDb score for this is pretty low, I suspect people have been watching it with totally different expectations. Or maybe, the afore-mentioned technical stuff is just too unbearable for many. Much as I can understand that, Fall of the Rebel Angels speaks more to me than 9 1/2 Weeks ever has. This is the real deal. The locations are real. The people are real. Nothing is glossy. The lover says to the woman in one scene, very clearly: "You see misery, illness and poorness all around, but there is more to hereabouts".
Much as I agree with the adventurous wife's late-yet-correct observation of the mysterios bandit/lover's Napoli setting, I can also imagine how differently he sees his own existence. What he dwells in is what he has known all his life.
It was odd to learn that Clio Goldsmith was 24 when this movie came out. I don't think they cast her as a 24-year old, though. Because not only would it be awkward (even in 1981) for a young professor to marry a teen, but also her daughter looked older than 6, which suggests she was cast as an almost-30-year-old woman, which her looks stragely provided.
I'm not sure if this was a re-telling of Carmen or Madame Bovary or something to that effect. But it kept me engaged. Maybe also thanks to the lack of up-to-date audiovisual quality, I stuck more with the acting and the setting of the scenes. The wedding at the seaside restaurant was really something, and so was the dramatic bathroom scene following it.
I just cannot rate this movie. Because I don't feel like giving any score less than a straight 8, however I wouldn't want to give anyone high hopes.
