Naples in Veils

This captivating, psychological, supernatural-noir-ish Italian drama ties its central character’s subconscious ills to an audience’s slowly dissolving sense of the story’s reality. Adriana (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a reticent, middle-aged coroner, atypically goes home one night with a lusty, younger man named Andrea (Alessandro Borghi)—a stud with the devil in his eyes—for a steamy bout of sex. In the morning, the two lovers make a date to meet later, but Andrea doesn’t show, and Adriana learns why when she finds herself examining his mutilated corpse at work. This might sound like a perfect setup for a police procedural/mystery, but the story really follows Adriana’s subsequent plunge into a world of ghosts, lookalikes, antiquities theft, nude photos, murder, and a bizarre visit to a bedridden medium and the latter’s dwarf assistant. The weirdness grows while the city’s Neapolitan culture and Baroque art become an operatic backdrop for surprising developments. Director Ferzan Özpetek takes his camera through Naples’s atmospheric (and spooky in the dark) streets, ancient chapels, and designer apartments, all part of the bubble-world of Adriana and her well-heeled (if warmly compassionate, and possibly imagined) community of family and friends. Recommended. (T. Keogh)