Carmen Trigiante & co in "Il Sottile Fascino del Peccato" [2010 Italy]

Very rarely, even jaded cinephiles like me stumble across a film that they wished they'd never watched, and couldn't wait to get it out of their system. I've never heard of Franco Silvia and wanted to give "Il Sottile Fascino del Peccato" [Eng. Trans: The Discreet Fascination of Sin] a try as it was billed as an erotic thriller. A few films like this, and one can easily unlearn what one knows about film making.

I've watched films from this genre by the dozen (agree - I was going through a phase) - from masters of Giallo like Fulci, Bava, Argento, and Martino, to more 'sanitised' French erotic horror a la Rollin, and even Spanish equivalents like Franco and particularly Naschy who I think Silvia was actually trying to emulate plot-wise. But the direction is poor - a lot of the scenes have no sense of composition, and timing, because of which even people who can act end up looking like amateurs - and spare a thought for those who can't, like most them in the film!

The story in a nutshell - A writer of erotic novels returns to her village for her mother's funeral - everyone claim she committed suicide, but she thinks it might have been murder. She investigates, sometimes wearing ridiculous lingerie possibly borrowed from Tinto Brass' costume department,  and we come across witches, satanic rituals, priestesses (who at least should have got naked as is only customary - but they barely do), corrupt police and, plenty of roses! I'm actually glad I'd already forgotten most of the film. I don't remember the character names and can't be bothered to load the DVD to find out - so I'm not going to give a scene description here, apart from adding that the nudity is brief, probably even unintended, and perhaps remnants of lazy editing with assorted nipple-slips and downblouse, baring a short scene where we see Carmen taking a shower in full view of the camera.

Carmen Trigiante plays the writer with a decent ass investigating her mother's death, Milena Miconi the blonde witch/priestess/hotel manager/father's mistress/generally evil thing (and possibly the only person who can act among the lot), Fabrizia Martano the curly haired waif who is the girlfriend of our writer's 'platonic' childhood friend. A couple of uncredited 'tette' also appear somewhere in the compilation.





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