NIFFF 2008 - Perfume of the Lady in Black Intro
After the link bump we have Italian filmmaker Francesco Barilli introducing his film, The Perfume of the Lady at NIFFF tonight. The occasion was so rare I couldn't pass up the chance to film it for Twitch audiences that otherwise wouldn't be able to experience this.
The use of the ciakman (crane Sergio Leone had once used) in the opening establishing shot of the atypical giallo, The Perfume of the Lady (only out I believe via the Italian label Raro for DVD), by Francesco Barilli has always been one of my all-time favorite movie introductions. It's such a simple conceit that performs such a complex juxtaposition of characters and setting into one small bite that is at once as artful as it is craftsmanship. The knock on any seemingly fever dream-like films like The Stunt Man by audiences is that no one spells out for them where reality ends and begins. Which is to suggest every piece of art should be explained perhaps, or and I could be wrong, art doesn't have to and in many cases when it's not easily defined and done in such a way that you can never find the seams between reality and fantasy at any one place in it to say, "a ha - it was all a dream/reality!" Which in the case of The Perfume of the Lady, is a strong point to me. You can just as easily suggest it's one big dream as you could that no reality does show up. There are things that connect, contradict and blur just the same. Maybe we will never know what happened as in the case of a film like Memento or even another Giallo that predates this particular structure with Sergio Martino's All the Colors of the Dark. Barilli's film is one of those rare innocuous pieces of cinema where three to four viewings later and your still changing your mind on what it's all about. If ever there was a film as equally amazing and challenging at the same time, this one is it. Certainly don't go into it expecting a routine gialli with black gloves and killer priests.
Regardless, I'm interviewing Barilli in a few short hours to hopefully to a certain extent, shed some light on his film, its rumors and throw out my own theories on it.
