The Double

As a fan of gialli, I had high hopes for this one. It has a solid cast. Jean Sorel is in some of the better ones, including 'The Short Night of Glass Dolls' and 'Lizard in a Woman's Skin.' It's got an intriguing Hitchcock-esque title. Who is 'The Double'? Sadly, 'La Controfigura' just lacks the smart twists and turns of a great mystery thriller. It's not enough about who killed whom and is too much about who's doing whom.

The film starts strong, with a man being shot in a carpark. Why did it happen? Who shot him? Will he survive? Unfortunately, the next hour and a half won't shed much light on that subject. Instead, you'll spend a holiday in a really weird setting with our protagonist, who manages to make every situation weird and awkward. He's constantly jealous of his new wife while simultaneously trying to get it on with other women, and in the wrongest, most cringey ways possible.

So about three quarters of the way through the soap opera, you're probably wondering, 'what happened to our great mystery'? Well, eventually all is revealed, of course, but what did it have to do with anything else in the film? God knows. The story includes diplomats and physicists and bad guys asking, 'Where is it?', yet they're all tossed aside as useful plot points, not even used as red herrings.

'La Controfigura' is not a totally unwatchable film. The actors are decent and good looking, the locations are nice, there's some drama and intrigue. It's just that the soap opera is pretty disconnected from the actual mystery. The puzzle is missing some pieces that could have at least formed a picture.

First I must confess that I'm not a big fan of gialli. I've seen enough of them to know that they almost invariably play gleefully on the audience's prurient and senselessly violent impulses, and, to boot, a good percentage of them are inept in the filmmaking department. There usually isn't much of interest for someone looking for quality cinema. THE DOUBLE is one of the exceptions.

The film shares its flashback structure with Claude Sautet's poignant French drama LE CHOSES DE LA VIE. In addition, "The Double" would be a very fitting companion piece to Aldo Lado's MALASTRANA, a giallo which it closely resembles, and which also stars Jean Sorel.

Frank (Sorel) is an indolent playboy living off proceeds from his father's business. As the film begins, Frank drives his Citroen into a Rome parking garage and is shot by a mysterious bearded man. The remainder of the story is a series of flashbacks, as the dying Frank recollects how he arrived at his present circumstance: Frank was married to the lovely but dimwitted Lucia(Ewa Aulin), but secretly pined after her mirror-image, more sophisticated mother Nora(Lucia Bose). When Nora became involved with an American drifter, Eddie(Sergio Doria), Frank was green with envy. Things spiral out of control....but not as one would expect. By the climax, the moral comes into focus: Keeping one's passions unchecked can lead to ruin. Not exactly a new notion, but it's intriguingly explored here.

"The Double" is not without its flaws. The (customarily, for an Italian film) incongruous folk music and the anything-goes attitude towards sex and lounging about are badly dated; early sections of the film are languorous and convoluted; the final scene is not quite clear, at least in the version I saw. I would love to see a subtitled incarnation of the film, as dubbing is oft disconcerting and poorly recorded.

Director Romolo Guerrieri is the real star of the proceedings. His commanding style and aplomb with the intercutting is impressive. There are countless striking visual flourishes throughout.

This is all most enjoyable if insubstantial. It looks good and sounds good throughout. Jean Sorel effective, as ever, without seeming to put himself too far out. Just a raised eyebrow is often all he needs to do to convey to us his thinking. Bit bewildering at times with much flashing back and forth but the two ladies help, both Lucie Bose and Ewa Aulin as mother and daughter are easy on the eye, in and out of their clothes. Many films of this time had prolonged sequences somewhere in them where half naked lovers ran along a beach or galloped horses in the surf or ran into sunlight through cornfields but this film, at times, seems to consist of just those dreamy (but insignificant) moments.

Poor Jean Sorel. He heads down to an underground car park to innocently park his car and some mysterious guy shoots him. As he hits the ground, instead of his life flashing before his eyes, an entire giallo film does instead, and not just the flashbacks of stuff that actually happened – this flashback contains his fantasies too!

You see Jean is a young(ish) businessman working for his father in Morocco, although mooching off him while his brother (Giacomo Rossi- Stuart) does all the hard work might be a better description. When we first meet Jean he's frolicking around the beach with his new wife Lucia (including some underwater noodling – that's one detailed flashback!). Lucia seems to be interested in a local hippy type who's wandering around the beach, which Jean isn't too happy with. He also keeps hallucinating that he's with another lady, which confused the hell out of me at first.

This other lady is Lucia's mum, and although Jean gets jealous of Lucia talking to the hippy (Eddie, his name is), he doesn't mind trying it on with her mum or becoming completely obsessed by her, and it doesn't help that she's hooked up with Eddie. This leads to Jean fantasising about shooting Eddie in the face with a rifle, which is a strange thing to have a flashback about.

Things jump between Rome and Morocco while Jean flirts with Lucia's mum, argues with Lucia, discusses the 'hippy movement' on a yacht and such like. It's all kind of trippy and disjointed and although it's quite different from your usual giallo madness, there's not enough of the usual giallo madness here. Although the ending was pretty daft.

Jean Sorel seems to have moved away from the Giallo genre following this and Short Night of the Glass Dolls – he was quite good though.

A man called Giovanni is shot in an underground car park by an ominous old man. The rest of the story is told in disjointed flashbacks that piece together the scenario that resulted in this situation arising. It turns out that Giovanni is an idle playboy who has affair with his young wife's mother while holidaying in Morocco. The mother ends up taking up with an American drifter and Giovanni is consumed with jealousy; murder follows.

The Double is a pretty interesting thriller. Its structure is one of the primary reasons why. The way in which scenes are edited together in a non-chronological way gives it a mysterious and dreamlike feel. The soundtrack accentuates this tone, seeing as it's a score that can best be described as breezy. The film benefits from the presence of Jean Sorel as Giovanni. Sorel starred in several gialli from the time and always seems to put in a solid turn. Also of note is Ewa Aulin as Sorel's young wife. Aulin had earlier appeared in the ultra-weird Death Laid an Egg, here she is also good and cute as a button; she even has time for an extended naked underwater swim, which was nice.

This is a good film. It isn't a typical giallo; it's more of a psychological thriller. It's well acted and directed and it isn't particularly predictable. If you like Italian thrillers then you should like this too.