The Perfume of the Lady in Black

Silvia works in a laboratory and has an orderly life. Then she starts seeing things in her flat. She sees her mother in the mirror; the woman killed herself years ago. A girl appears and talks to her. Her neighbours turn strange; there are knocks at the door, invitations, everyone is too close to her. Silvia cannot tell what is real. Her lover is worried but she does not trust him either. She stops leaving the flat. In the end the narrative goes back and the night her mother died opens. Francesco Barilli directs. Mimsy Farmer plays Silvia; Maurizio Bonuglia and Mario Scaccia are in the cast. It is an Italian production, made in 1974. The film is counted as giallo but does not follow the known shape; there is no masked killer and no series of murders. Its form is psychological; the plot is given through the character's perception and the viewer is left in the same uncertainty. The matter it treats is childhood trauma; the figure of the mother is at the centre and the past leaks into the present. The flat is not a place inside the narrative but a condition; the interiors produce the tension by themselves. The last section breaks away from the genre entirely and goes somewhere unexpected. The use of colour is dense; red and black are deliberately set against each other. Its limit is pace; the narrative is very slow, there is little event, and the ending offers no explanation. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies Italian cinema and psychological horror. Who it is not for: it is slow, closed, and the ending shattering.