Friday, August 17, 2012

Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa... Sandra (1965)

Vides Film (Italy)
Directed by Luchino Visconti
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Visconti turns incest into grand melodrama when Claudia Cardinale returns to her childhood home. She brings along her new husband to meet the family, including her brother, who smothers her with kisses. Mom is staying in some kind of hospital, apparently slowly losing her mind. Her stepdad pops up and starts many heated arguments. It all takes place in a large provincial mansion surrounded by works of art and set to classical piano music by Cesar Franck. The melodrama occasionally gets out of hand, but it is an effective and haunting portrait of suppressed and forbidden desires.

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