jaieinmiami A vision of the psychological extremes that unrequited erotic obsessions can create, L'IMBALSAMATORE has a deceptively placid surface. Peppino, a dwarfish, homely-looking taxidermist with horrible teeth, takes an interest in Valerio, a gorgeous young man who is biding his time unproductively as a food runner in a cheap restaurant. Peppino takes Valerio on as assistant, even though he can't really afford it, and Valerio is overwhelmed with gratitude for the mentorship. But Peppino's attitude soon begins to take on uncomfortably sexual and possessive overtones, that everyone except Valerio sees - at first.L'IMBALSAMATORE has an opaque atmosphere of unease. Like THE VANISHING, much of it is shot in cheerful, sunny daylight, and there is plenty of light-hearted humor; like MONSIEUR HIRE, you can't be sure if what seems creepy is your own prejudice or a genuine malice. Matteo Garrone builds the erotic tension to an almost unbearable intensity. This is an audacious picture that plays with perception and memory; we can never be sure if what we are seeing is really happening, or occurring only in Peppino's twisted fantasies, or in Valerio's bewildered daydreams. Reality and fantasy blur. L'IMBALSAMATORE is feverish and spellbinding.

rhinocerosfive-1 Everybody wants to be adopted by a rich uncle. Everybody wants to pick up a girl who just cleaned out her boss's register. It's fairy godmothers and runaway princesses. But fairy tales are grim affairs. Remember the one about the maid who switches costumes with her mistress and gets stuck naked in a barrel riddled with nails and tossed in the river? Nobody wants to be the maid. There isn't much free in any life, heaven or hell or where we are. There are consequences to any act. Newton's third law applies to every tale, fairy or straight.The action is a monster who can give you what you want. The opposite reaction of L'IMBALSAMATORE is that in return, Rumpelstiltskin wants more than your baby. He wants you. That's what he always wanted anyway, and there's not much in the world sadder than an aging troll. An aging troll is a desperate animal, like a junkie in his impossible obsession, but junkies can clean up. A troll is what God made him, and it doesn't end well for most of them. Peppino Profeta can maybe see the future, as his name implies, but also as his name implies he's a little short-sighted. Like most men he can't see past his erection. He gets in over his head and that's where people drown, but sometimes they take you with them. This little monster, pathetic as he is, could do a lot of damage. Matteo Garrone photographs this character from odd angles, relegating him to the corner of the frame much of the time to accentuate his marginalization.Add to that the movie's grim look (the film is grainy and underexposed, packed with pore-opening closeups on the world's dirtiest beach) and its cringe-fetish situations (nearly every scene portrays an awkward or unpleasant social encounter) and you've got a prime downer of a story. It is creepy and nasty and willing to go places that horrify most people. I like it. When Valerio sleeps with his troll, the movie does not exploit his charity or contempt or self loathing, nor do we even know whether he feels any of these things. How often in life do we have complicated motivations to explain our acts? Much of the time, for me. People who are 100% sure about every choice they make live in an atmosphere immensely less textured than mine. Living in America I get very few straightforward portraits of weird worlds. North American directors who shoot ambiguous stories tend to be stylists like the magi David Lynch, Todd Solondz, or Todd Haynes. We get occasional fine entries by Gus Van Sant, again usually heavily personalized, and David Cronenberg keeps trying but only made me happy once. It's nice to see a 3-dimensional neo-realist take on the asymmetrical universe. Where better than Italy to find such a thing?

Paolo A. Gardinali Definitely not a movie for everyone. I looked for this movie immediately after seeing the most recent Garrone feature, Primo Amore (First Love) currently in the Festival circuit.The structure of the movies is non surprisingly very similar: a love story that transcends understanding and plays with common notions of relationship and sexuality, eventually trespassing into obsession. Again Garrone starts from a true story, but tries to make something universal, abstracting it from time (no modern technology) and space. The geography of the action is clear (well, at least to Italian) but the beautiful photography transforms the landscape into chiaroscuro paintings of foggy uncertainty. Ernesto Mahieux is the perfect choice for the central character-- a strong although somewhat physically stunted, madly in love protagonist.This is one movie that is difficult to classify: it's not a thriller, and very few will consider this a love story, although it borrows elements from both genres to construct something unique that gets under the skin of the spectator. Think Fellini and Lynch, but without the gratuitous weirdness. A little gem, for the few who will get it.

Chris Knipp Matteo Garrone's `The Embalmer' (L'Imbalsamatore) evokes a troubling Diana Arbus Italy that's Fellini without the charm, Antonioni without the chic angst. (Clearly, it's just pure Garrone.) This moody, compelling film focuses (to add one more famous filmmaker name) on a Fassbinder relationship of hopeless repressed gay love. The desolate coastal spaces of the Campania region and the foggy inland environs of Cremona blend with a haunting jazz soundtrack to evoke a decade-old story of gay awakening and desperation, Patrice Chéreau's desire-ridden early film, L'Homme Blessé (1983). You can argue whether L'Imbalsamatore is film noir: it's based on a police blotter item about a deadly Roman love triangle and has gangland crime, double-crosses and a femme fatale, but Garrone has created a slow, creepy character study that leads through initially cheery but off-kilter events into more flesh-crawling developments that drift into final sudden violence. It's been called homophobic, and indeed the gay person isn't stable or admirable: he's a lonely dwarf with a hopeless concealed passion and crafty subterfuges that lead into spooky delusions. But the movie isn't so much about sexuality at all as about repressed desire and confused intentions.To bring yet another director into play in discussing this wholly original movie, the dwarf suggests David Lynch and some of the interiors and their lighting indeed suggest a southern Italian Blue Velvet.Peppino, a little fifty-ish taxidermist, finds handsome, naive young Valerio in the Naples zoo and lures him by offering an inflated salary, into giving up his job as a cook and becoming his apprentice. (Picture the extra-tall Valerio walking next to tiny squat Peppino: that's Diane Arbus.) Peppino has extra dough because he moonlights for the Mafia sewing drugs into corpses. The sweet Valerio likes learning about taxidermy and is too good natured and simple to see the hidden nature of Peppino's interest, though even Peppino's Mafia boss sees it and warns Peppino of its danger. To justify being close to Valerio in bed Peppino arranges joint orgies with call girls. That keeps Valerio out too late and his brother kicks him out of the house, so he moves in with Peppino. Peppino hides his Mafia connection as well as his attraction from Valerio, even when he takes Valerio along on a Mafia job in Cremona. While waiting for Peppino in a Cremona hotel, Valerio meets Deborah, a volatile young woman with surgically enhanced lips, and he and she trick Peppino into taking her along when they return home. For a while the three play around together and Deborah dresses Valerio in a nightgown and puts lipstick on Peppino. Eventually Valerio wants to move out and live with Deborah, who's now pregnant with their child, and that doesn't suit Peppino at all. Though Valerio remains ambivalent to the end, Peppino and Deborah grow too sour toward each other for the triangle to continue. The young couple goes off to Cremona to get jobs and live with Deborah's parents and wait for the child to be born. Peppino eventually comes after them and stalks Valerio, introducing himself to the parents as Valerio's `uncle.' Ernesto Manieux as Peppino exhibits a bottomless, maniacal charm throughout that is both smooth and menacing. Valerio Foglia Manzillo as Valerio is so tall and so athletically handsome that he seems peculiar too, especially in constant proximity to Manieux. L'Imbalsamatore is about transformation and confusion. Sometimes Peppino is seen from far below and seems gigantic. He's physically unattractive and can be creepy but he's also charming, sociable and charismatic. Valerio goes from cook to taxidermist to waiter. He is a devastating seducer or childlike waif: his powerful physique is dangerous because the brain is unfocused. He's putty in the hands of Peppino. There's something of `Mice and Men's' Lennie in him, which comes out toward the end. Peppino's diminutive stature limits him, but he manipulates what power he has with consummate skill. Right at the end, in Cremona, he lures Valerio away from Deborah, gets him drunk, and tempts him to run off – where? To Cuba or Africa; Peppino has him mesmerized into wanting to escape Cremona's landlocked fogs and go off with him almost anywhere to get away from the monkey-suit uniform he wears at a hotel, the constricting responsibilities of fatherhood, and the generally stifling bourgeois scene at Deborah's family's house, symbolized by crunching the identical piece of toast every morning across the table from her father, with the mother coming like clockwork to pour the coffee and milk from two opposing kettles.Garrone's Italy is a haunted place, drab and commonplace yet unlike any other. His scenes, which use a lot of ultra close-ups of the faces, are uniformly compelling: the dangerous tensions of the love triangle keep them focused. The various sequences in which Peppino tries to become intimate with Valerio skirt the edge between jaunty and flesh-crawly. The dialogue seems hasty, natural, improvised (unlike traditional Italian films, this has a live sound track with no post-dubbing). It gives a sense of convincing lies, mindless formulas that just get by or seem calming but cause confusion, mimicking an understanding that is not there. Background sounds are skillfully and subtly used. One has the sense of being in the hands of an exceptionally original director who knows well how to use the rituals and longeurs of Italian life to his own special storytelling ends. In the disquieting, manic final sequence Peppino wields a huge pistol, which he talks about as if it were an unmanageable, unpredictable woman. His desperation has made him deranged and dangerous but Valerio also seems to have gone very quietly and therefore more frighteningly crazy. The ending is stunning but inevitable.