Ritual: A Psychomagic Story

Depressed and emotionally unstable Lia (Désirée Giorgetti), a successful dress designer, has a sexually dominant, thrill-seeking boyfriend named Viktor (Ivan Franěk), who demands she have an abortion when she becomes pregnant. After the procedure, a mournful Lia takes her therapist’s advice and goes off to stay with her aunt Agata (Anna Bonasso) at the latter’s spooky old villa in the country. Once there, a blurring of the real and the supernatural takes hold, not only for the increasingly delusional Lia (who communicates with a pair of come-and-go young children who seem to know a lot about her grief), but also for Agata, a benign witch who practices psychic surgery. When an enraged Viktor suddenly intrudes, the battle for sanity—with magical overtones—commences in earnest. Writers-directors Giulia Brazzale and Luca Immesi throw the audience off track with a hint of elegant depravity in the film’s opening scenes, with a refined and beautiful Lia appearing to submit to Viktor’s sexual authority with coy confidence. But it isn’t long before the more authentic characters beneath the games emerge, at which point anarchy reigns. With most of the film’s color washed away, Ritual basks in unnerving shadows, deep darkness in spooky tunnels below Agata’s big house, and shattered light in a garden’s leafy gauntlet. And film buffs will appreciate a cameo appearance by legendary and no doubt inspiring cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo). Recommended. (T. Keogh)