The Embalmer (2002)

Fresh and Exciting

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

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Everybody wants to be adopted by a rich uncle. Everybody wants to pick up a girl who just cleaned out her boss's register. It's fairy godmothers and runaway princesses. But fairy tales are grim affairs. Remember the one about the maid who switches costumes with her mistress and gets stuck naked in a barrel riddled with nails and tossed in the river? Nobody wants to be the maid. There isn't much free in any life, heaven or hell or where we are. There are consequences to any act. Newton's third law applies to every tale, fairy or straight.The action is a monster who can give you what you want. The opposite reaction of L'IMBALSAMATORE is that in return, Rumpelstiltskin wants more than your baby. He wants you. That's what he always wanted anyway, and there's not much in the world sadder than an aging troll. An aging troll is a desperate animal, like a junkie in his impossible obsession, but junkies can clean up. A troll is what God made him, and it doesn't end well for most of them. Peppino Profeta can maybe see the future, as his name implies, but also as his name implies he's a little short-sighted. Like most men he can't see past his erection. He gets in over his head and that's where people drown, but sometimes they take you with them. This little monster, pathetic as he is, could do a lot of damage. Matteo Garrone photographs this character from odd angles, relegating him to the corner of the frame much of the time to accentuate his marginalization.Add to that the movie's grim look (the film is grainy and underexposed, packed with pore-opening closeups on the world's dirtiest beach) and its cringe-fetish situations (nearly every scene portrays an awkward or unpleasant social encounter) and you've got a prime downer of a story. It is creepy and nasty and willing to go places that horrify most people. I like it. When Valerio sleeps with his troll, the movie does not exploit his charity or contempt or self loathing, nor do we even know whether he feels any of these things. How often in life do we have complicated motivations to explain our acts? Much of the time, for me. People who are 100% sure about every choice they make live in an atmosphere immensely less textured than mine. Living in America I get very few straightforward portraits of weird worlds. North American directors who shoot ambiguous stories tend to be stylists like the magi David Lynch, Todd Solondz, or Todd Haynes. We get occasional fine entries by Gus Van Sant, again usually heavily personalized, and David Cronenberg keeps trying but only made me happy once. It's nice to see a 3-dimensional neo-realist take on the asymmetrical universe. Where better than Italy to find such a thing?

It's a noir, no doubt... you even have the dark lady. Take three excellent actors, a well-chosen setting, a young and talented director, and you have L'imbalsamatore. Once again, when an Italian director is really good, like Sergio Leone, he can take an American film genre, turn it upside down and make a great Italian movie. However, Garrone proved how good he is not just by filming this, but by making another masterpiece, that is, Gomorra. If you like this one, try also the other movie. Basically one of the plots of Gomorra is set in the same places where L'imbalsamatore is set.Another important element of the film is the landscape. When Italian directors are at their best, they can render landscape like no one. Garrone can do this with the wastelands of Northern Campania. Hats off, then, to Ernesto Mahieux, who delivers an impressive performance that you won't forget easily...

For those who enjoy creepy psycho-sexual thrillers which feature determined dwarfs who are taxidermists, sultry, sulky and equally determined Italian temptresses, and tall, handsome and dumb apprentice taxidermists, The Embalmer (L'Imbalsamatore) might be the movie for you. "It's a shrew," says Peppino Profeta (Ernesto Mahieux) to Valerio (Valerio Foglia Manzillo), showing a tiny little animal perfectly mounted on a bit of wood. "Very rare! Imagine, my cat caught this, and what a battle to yank it out of its mouth!" It's not long before Valerio, who is far too dense to appreciate a metaphor, will be the object of a nasty and deadly tug-of-war between Peppino and that determined cat Deborah (Elisabetha Rochetti). Peppino is a very small (think of a thin and younger Danny De Vito), lonely man who has great charm and a sly, determined will to win what he wants and to keep it when he thinks he's won it. Valerio, a tall young man he meets at a zoo, is what he wants. Valerio is as good- natured and gullible as a puppy, and just as liable to roll over for the first person who wants to rub his stomach. Deborah is a woman who knows what she wants, is just as determined and manipulative as Peppino in getting it, and just as willing to rub the puppy's stomach. Peppino disguises his objective by arranging parties with easy women, but it's clear he prefers to watch Valerio rather than the females. Deborah is too experienced not to know what Peppino wants even if Valerio seems a bit dense about things. One would think Valerio would find himself in the best of all possible worlds. However, he's too naive to simply accept the blessings of circumstance and too easily influenced by the almost ruthless neediness and guilt both Peppino and Deborah use on him. As the story moves along, we learn that Peppino is in debt to the mafia and keeps in their good graces by opening corpses to insert packages of drugs for delivery. He knows that sideline can't be maintained forever. And Deborah, not only using her sexual skills on Valerio to keep him close-by, also announces to him that she's pregnant. This obsessive, bizarre contest over Valerio ends when he takes some decisive steps that involve gunshots and sinking cars. Is this movie a minor masterpiece that dwells on neediness and sexual manipulation? Well, no. But it certainly is a stylish and intriguing film, even with an ending that dissolves into loony violence and a certain nihilistic artiness. The story is interesting, the direction has style and the director keeps things moving. The film features an underlying and growing uneasiness, especially as Peppino's obsessions grow and Deborah's clutching anger becomes clear. The best thing about the movie, however, is Ernesto Mahieux. The actor is probably no taller than 5 feet. Acting against the more-than-six-feet-tall Valerio Foglia Manzillo, Mahieux must project charm and sincerity. But then Mahieux must also show us Peppino's subtle and then not-so subtle intentions and his growing insecurity, neediness and desperation. It's quite a performance, and every bit believable.

A neat little gem, this movie. Not the greatest, but yet, approaches with a careful plot, the relationships between several people. Shot in outdoor location of Castel Volturno, a grayish wintery concrete condominium on the coast between Rome and Naples, and using direct sound and not the usual studio-added dialogues, it gives an immediate feel and support for the main character, Peppino, who, feeling lonely, convinces a young man to follow him into his trade of taxidermy. Peppino is a virtuoso in establishing relationships, and like a magician, he moves his hands and talks big without really revealing much, and gets the young man's attention. It reminded me a bit of "L.I.E.". Would love to see the actor and Danny de Vito in a movie together.