Giuseppe Capotondi’s thriller starts with an unsettling scene in which a hotel guest commits suicide. Understandably, this rattles one of the maids, but Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport), a Slovenia immigrant, still makes it to her speed-dating event. There, she meets a worthy candidate, Guido (Filippo Timi), a former cop who now runs a security firm. But when one of their outings gets tangled up in a serious crime, Sonia starts losing the moorings on her life. The twisty-turny plot, with its broody emphasis suggesting a protagonist may be crazy — or is life actually so off-kilter? — recalls such masterpieces as Vertigo, Suspicion or even Repulsion, but Capotondi’s film fails to reach such heights. Like so many inferior thrillers, it begins intriguingly and sustains a certain moody vibe but collapses in a heap of cheap, familiar tricks. In Italian, with subtitles. Starts Fri., July 15, Manor
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2011.
