The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a distinctive Italian thriller from the less obvious end of the giallo spectrum. It brought me to mind of other more psychologically focused gialli such as Footprints on the Moon (1975) with its dreamlike feel and mentally fragile female protagonist who finds herself in the midst of mysterious events that connect with something strange in her past. It also has similarities to the apartment-based horror/thrillers of Roman Polanski. Its story centres on a woman who starts to experience strange hallucinations that include visions of a mysterious black-clad woman who applies perfume and a ghostly little girl.Director Francesco Barilli helms this one and, on the strength of this film, he is a director who definitely didn't get a chance to make enough movies. This is a very odd giallo which mixes unusual elements together such as Alice in Wonderland and the African occult. It's presented in a visual style that is often breathtakingly beautiful; one scene involving a medium particularly stands out, where the use of colour and mirrors is quite wonderful. On the whole, it's a very classy production that begins like it means to go on with a fantastic extended opening crane shot that takes us from a child's toy boat in a fountain way up to the high balconies where a couple of the key characters are introduced. This visual elegance in some ways can throw the viewer off-guard however as there are some proper visceral shocks to come in this one, as anybody who has seen it can attest. The lead actress is Mimsy Farmer who also starred in Dario Argento's earlier classic-style giallo Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). On the basis of that movie I wasn't too impressed with her, seeing as she over-acted excessively; which is why I was so pleasantly surprised with her work here, where she is in practically every scene and does pretty convincing work in a role that requires a decent amount of range.This is certainly a high quality giallo, although it will no doubt not have universal appeal to all seasoned fans of the sub-genre given it travels down a less hysterical path to its conclusion. It does venture into some very unusual territory for these kinds of films, however, and certainly is a very fine example of the genre.

Sylvia (Mimsy Farmer), an industrial scientist, is troubled by strange hallucinations related to the tragic suicide of her mother.After the success of "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), the Italian horror world began to embrace Satanic and occult stories. This is one of them. Director Francesco Barilli took a cue from early Argento and made a giallo with some dark undertones. He previously wrote a script for Umberto Lenzi, but had not directed a feature himself.The cast may not be well-known outside of Italy, but have appeared in Lenzi, Argento and D'Amato films. One even appeared in the notorious "Salo", and a few starred alongside Daria Nicolodi in a picture. So there is plenty of connection here.This film is beautifully shot with excellent color and better than average acting. It deserves more recognition than it gets. Wikipedia and IMDb are relatively silent on the film's creation, and even Italian horror historian Luca Palmerini has little more than a sentence to say about it in his book...

Like Barbara Bach, Mimsy Farmer went to Italy and fell in love. She did, however, have a long career in the US, starting with Gidget Goes Hawaiian to a few biker movies. She remained in Italy making films until her divorce, and then moved to France where she continued acting.This is more a psychological horror film that a true giallo. It was a tale of a woman going mad over unresolved traumas from her childhood. Or, maybe it was a tale of a woman being driven mad for nefarious purposes. It was not totally clear, but there were little clues throughout.Whatever the case, the ending was a total surprise and nothing led you to expect it.

THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK is very much worth watching. But it takes a lot of patience because it doesn't follow the template we expect for a film like this; I kept watching because it was wonderfully photographed, had a tremendous musical score, and I kept expecting to get really involved with the main character.Unfortunately, my involvement wavered because most of the action took place inside her head (as best I can figure) and as the story progresses she gets crazier and crazier. For that reason Silvia gets relegated to the role of The Unreliable Narrator. And when a film's makers get too involved in questions of What is real? and What is illusion? my mind goes to the question of What time does whatever is playing in Auditorium 2 start and can I sneak it?Silvia, played by Mimsy Farmer, is a work obsessed career girl employed in some sort of chemical lab. The exact nature of her work is never explained, but she's one of those women who never wants to take a day off. Whatever she does obviously pays well: she has an apartment in Rome with a living room big enough to play polo in.Mimsy Farmer is a blonde American actress of the Hope Lange- Vera Miles school who projects practicality and good sense. She made a second career for herself in Italian films like this after parts on this side of the Atlantic dried up. She kept my interest going even when the plot faltered.Silvia has a Dark Secret in her past, and her life gradually begins to unravel. The atmosphere becomes more menacing, but not a lot happens. It's past the one hour mark before the first irrelevant supporting character gets killed off.Finally there's a climactic scene where Silvia is confronted by the phantoms of the past and events seem to come to a resolution.Then (don't worry- I'm not going to give anything away here) director Francesco Barilli seems to crank up a whole new movie in the last few minutes so different in tone (both in theme and execution) that it seems totally unrelated to everything we've seen and heard, even though it does feature the same actors we've been watching.Imagine if THE KING'S SPEECH had ended with Dr. Logue and King George VI wearing fishnet stockings and dancing "The Time Warp" on the steps of Buckingham Palace. This movie goes off the rails even worse than that.And that's why the ending of THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK dropped its rating from an eight to a three.You can see for yourself if you're a Netflix subscriber- it's available streaming now.