A priest who has witnessed a murder begins to receive threatening messages; his brother, a neurotic professor with a bad case of the flashbacks, investigates. I would only recommend this boring and utterly formulaic giallo to ardent admirers of Stefania Casini, who receives unusually high billing and a fair amount of
screen time. A pity, then, that she's given nothing to do, and that some idiot thought it a good idea to straighten her wondrous red curls and dress her like a catalogue model for frumpy, middle-aged knitwear. The plot is ridiculous, the red herrings wouldn't fool an infant, the dialogue in the English language version is atrocious and the murder scenes lack flair. Although it smacks of filler, some of the wintry location photography around Venice is nice.
January 20, 2009
