Giulio Questi's 1968 cult oddity looks like a giallo—with all the mod set and costume design that implies--but the stylistic signifiers belie the fact that it's an anti-capitalist thriller in the guise of a marital melodrama. With his customary élan, Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Great Silence) plays Marco, a smartly dressed managerial type who oversees an automated chicken processing plant owned by his wealthy wife, Anna (Gina Lollobrigida, The Law). They share their mansion with her young, blonde cousin, Gabrielle (Swedish actress Ewa Aulin, Candy), an orphan with an innocent veneer and some not-so-innocent intentions.
Marco is having an affair with Gabrielle who is having an affair with publicity agent Mondaini (Jean Sobieski, actress Leelee Sobieski's French, aquamarine-eyed father), a publicity agent. It would be enough to exhaust any man, but Marco is also resisting the efforts of his corporate overlords to move the factory in ethically dubious directions at the same time he's engaging in ethically dubious activities of his own as he arranges assignations with prostitutes that he pretends to torture and kill. It isn't clear if he has sex with them, though it's worth noting that he and Anna sleep in separate beds.
Questi's big set-piece arrives with a party at the mansion where the guests empty out one of the rooms and take turns entering and leaving it in pairs. Some leave delirious, others leave upset. As in much of the film, including a sequence featuring well-heeled women slurping up gloppy ice cream creations, Questi enjoys playing up the follies of capitalist culture from consumerism to indulgence. None of this unfolds in a straightforward manner. Instead, he disorients viewers at every turn via composer Bruno Maderna's dissonant string-based score, cinematographer Dario Di Palma's close-ups of facial features and body parts, and co-writer Franco Arcalli's fragmented editing. The experimental nature of the film makes it hard to fully grasp in one sitting.
This restoration adds 14 minutes cut from the original theatrical release, though the extra material only complicates the scenario further with the addition of Marco's disheveled friend, Luigi (Renato Romano), who looks forward to rejoining society after time spent in a sanatorium where he underwent electroshock therapy that erased much of his memory. Luigi doesn’t really fit into the story, which may have been the director's intention. Though he seems a little wackier than the rest, he's ultimately less harmful. In the end, Marco takes a stand against genetic mutation, but his darkest fantasies catch up with him on the personal front, leaving him neither hero nor villain, but rather a deeply flawed, tragic figure.
The brisk commentary from genre specialists Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson helps to place the film within the context of Italian cinema with a particular focus on the Giallo. This 2K restoration includes the edited version, in addition to a 2009 interview with Questi (1924-2014), a spoken-word review from critic Antonio Bruschini, and Questi's 2002 short film Doctor Schizo and Mister Phrenic. Recommended.