Segreti segreti (Secrets Secrets)

Original post date: 28 May 1987
Rating: ✭✭✰✰

This Italian film by Giuseppe Bertolucci (less famous brother of Bernardo) barely has a plot, and it does tend to drag in spots. But what makes it interesting is the form. The story is this: A small group of terrorists murder a judge. One of the band kills another member of group because he goes to pieces and accidentally wounds himself during the attack. Within a few days, the mastermind is picked up by the police. That’s it. But the few events over these days are not presented in strict chronological order. And some events are presented more than once, from different characters’ point of view. We hear a radio station disc jockey introduce the same song three times. Each time we are in a different place with different characters. We see a woman in a hospital bed make a phone call to her daughter. About 30 minutes later in the film we see the same telephone conversation from the daughter’s point of view. The basic plot ties together a set of characters, who otherwise have nothing to do with each other. But the consistent thread seems to be child-parent relations. A challenging, haunting film.

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