The Laughing Woman

Maria, who works in public relations, is invited to the house of a man called Dr Sayer and finds herself trapped there. His house is not a residence but an apparatus: every room a game, every game about degradation. Sayer says he has killed the women he put through this before her. As the film goes on, the question of who holds the power reopens. Piero Schivazappa's film comes from the far edge of late 1960s Italian genre cinema. The production design is its real proposition: pop art furniture, oversized sculpture, saturated colour. Set next to the violence, that design produces something cold and strange. Dagmar Lassander plays Maria, Philippe Leroy plays Sayer. Who it's for: Viewers curious about 1960s Italian genre cinema, heavily designed visual worlds, and films with cult standing. Who it's not for: The content is built on sexual violence and degradation, and the film aestheticises it. The psychology of the characters is not worked out convincingly either.