A Casa das Janelas Sorridentes

This is a great film. A slow-moving, ultimately very scary experience. It is the 1950s and our protagonist has come to an isolated Italian village to refurbish a fresco of St. Sebastian, painted with a creepy realism by a local artist, dubbed the "painter of agony" due to his fascination with painting the dead and the dying. This is a real backwater of a place, with little to do and little in the way of culture. When a friend of our protagonist's is mysteriously killed, before he could share what he knew about the mystery of the fresco, events are set in motion that ultimately lead to a very shocking climax.

This is a rather slow-moving film, but be patient and you'll be rewarded. It builds to a frightening conclusion and is a pretty nihilistic experience when all is said and done, not too far different from Avati's other masterpiece, _Zeder_ in tone. Now available in an Italian-language DVD with removable English subtitles!