Eyes of Crystal (Occhi di cristallo) Review

Eros Puglielli's Eyes of Crystal boasts one of the absolute finest opening sequences I have ever come across. Two cops race through the laundry draped back alleys of an un-named Italian city. They can hear the sounds of screaming and struggle nearby. A woman is being beaten and raped but will they be able to find and rescue her in this seemingly endless maze? The younger of the two - shaggy haired and wild eyed - plays a hunch and vaults a wall and is rewarded. The rapist is just around the corner. The woman is saved, the masked man apprehended. As the cop's partner arrives the rapist is unmasked and a glimmer of recognition and disgust flickers across the young cop's face. Before his older, calmer partner's horrified eyes he wheels and shoots the now-secure perpetrator in the leg. "For when he's released." It's a stunning, taught masterpiece of film making, shot in shaky handheld with colors bled away and edited to perfection. And Puglielli's just getting started.

Eyes of Crystal is a never ending barrage of stunning imagery, shot and edited to perfection. Even when you're baffled at where Puglielli could possibly be taking you the visuals and pacing are so compelling that you could never tear yourself away. That the film's ending is ultimately a bit of a let down is as much a matter of this opening being so impossibly strong as it is any sign of weakness per se.

The young cop is Inspector Amaldi, a viciously intelligent man with a degree in psychology who clearly has issues with women being victimized. While taking a statement from Giuditta, a beautiful college student plagued by an unknown stalker, Amaldi is called away to the scene of a ghastly crime. A pair of young lovers have been shot and killed in a field outside of town. Yards away is the corpse of a third victim, an elderly man slain while spying on the lovers. Troubling as the killings are, however, Amaldi is more concerned by one bizarre fact: the killer stayed at the scene to try and repair the young woman. The gaping wound in her breast has been sewn shut and bandaged despite the fact that she was clearly beyond help. Could the killer have been trying to preserve the corpse? If so Amaldi fears that they could be witnessing the birth of a serial killer.

He is, of course, correct. Subsequent murders become bloodier and more bizarre, coded messages left in blood, victim's limbs removed and those of a Victorian sex doll attached in their place. Amaldi is drawn into a bizarre world of death, taxidermy and alchemy, desperately struggling to decode the killer's messages and intentions while simultaneously pursuing a relationship with the lovely Giuditta. Things become even more complex when the killer scrawls one of his messages across the unconscious chest of Ajaccio, Amaldi's superior officer in hospital with a fatal brain tumor. Could Ajaccio's cancer triggered hallucinations have some connection to the case?

Eyes of Crystal is clearly not light viewing but in its high points -and it has many, many of those - it rivals and bests the very best of this noirish, nightmarish sub-genre, Seven included. Not only does Puglielli have a dazzling eye - playing effortlessly with shadow, color and composition - and a absolutely world class editor in Mauro Bonanni but he has a fascinating cast of characters to work with, each of them played to near perfection by his stellar cast. A major piece of Puglielli's genius is his ability to give you just enough - just enough information, just enough character - to keep you hooked while still hungry for more. He leaps from scene to scene in the film, from situation to bizarre situation, never slowing the pace for any significant stretch of exposition, but you always have enough, somehow. It certainly doesn't hurt him that he is working with actors able to convey so much through glances, through what they leave unsaid as much as what they say. Luigi Lo Cascio as Amaldi, in particular, is a mass of contradictions, violence lurking just beneath the surface. He is undeniably brilliant, but with that comes the knowledge that he fights a losing battle; that the policeman's curse is to always arrive too late, to always come in after the crime, and his failure to save is gnawing away at him.

Unfortunately Pulielli is let down some by the limits of his source material, a novel by Luca Di Fulvio. Having kept the audience spinning for the first three quarters of the film, the closing becomes surprisingly mundane. Having deduced so much from so little Amaldi completely misses a glaringly obvious piece of information handed to him on a platter; after being so callously ruthless with major characters throughout one I was sure would die is allowed to live; the villain's reveal is just a bit of a let down. It's not a horrible ending by any means, just a sadly 'safe' one, one that makes me wonder if Puglielli was dealing with studio pressure to lighten up a little bit before wrapping things up.

Eyes of Crystal is hitting DVD on the UKs Frightfest label January 30th. Make a note of it.