‘The Spiral’ Review: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi Is The Devil In Disguise In Paolo Strippoli’s Fiendishly Fun Horror-Thriller – Venice Film Festival

There will be people wondering why Paolo Strippoli’s unashamedly commercial horror-thriller The Spiral is in Competition and not in one of the festival’s many increasingly hard-to-navigate sidebars. But thank God it is; with a tsunami of documentary titles and a bunch of reality-based features that effectively make us all complicit in the rise of neo-fascism and the besh*ttification of life in general, it’s good to get back to something that brought us all together in the olden days — vicariously savoring the downfall of the rich, vain and gloriously naive. A more grounded mix of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Saki’s short horror story The Monkey’s Paw, The Spiral is a loud and very unsubtle piece of work that is surprisingly universal in its themes. Tempting derision from the outset, it starts on a dark and stormy night (although, to be fair, it could be daytime, such is the weather), with well-to-do mother Anna (Jasmine Trinca) on board a plane that is being tossed around by the elements. When she lands, Anna visits her daughter Alice, who is clearly not expecting her and hides the tell-tale underwear that suggests her departing female houseguest is more than just a friend. Not that Anna is in a state of mind to notice. Rather, Anna is an advanced state of discombobulation. “What I am about to tell you DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!” she tells her (although it actually does if you’ve ever seen a horror movie). “Everything you think you know about our family is a LIE!” (Which is also stretching it a bit.) But the great line that kicks off this gothic romp is a doozy. “SHE IS REAL!” insists Anna, rather jumping the gun and leaving us gagging for more. Watch on Deadline The image doesn’t immediately sway from side to side as it might have done 50 years ago but we do go very much into flashback territory. “We were what others wanted to be,” Anna sighs, moments before we see her as a younger mother, married with two kids (a boy and a girl) to a wealthy business man in Bari, Italy. Anna reminds Alice of the time her budding acting career nearly landed her a lucrative role in an advert for Barilla pasta. Sadly, we see Alice’s time in the spotlight rudely curtailed when she is savaged at a super-pretentious garden party by a most unlikely aggressor, the family dog. “That’s how SHE arrived,” wails Anna, who is determined to tell the story in her own sweet time. While praying in what should be a simple hospital chapel but seemingly designed with more than half an eye on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Anna is met by a stranger (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), who updates her on Alice’s condition: She is about to lose a leg, and that, she intimates, is the best-case scenario, since the surgeons in charge are inexperienced. If Anna agrees to a deal, the stranger will see to it that Alice pulls through, with nothing to remind her of the experience but “a scar and a bad scare.” The deal the stranger promises is a strange one. If Alice survives, her brother Tobia (Alessandro Carbonara) will put on a few pounds — “Tobia’s weight for Alice’s leg.” At her wit’s end, Anna agrees, and, for a time, everything seems to go back to normal. Except it doesn’t; Tobia develops an insatiable appetite that pumps up his weight and scuppers his plans to be a pro footballer. But are they really his plans? The stranger’s curse seems intended to inflict pain not only on the snobbish Anna, who cringes at the slob her son has become, but her pushy husband Walter (Adriano Giannini). The weight gain increases to a point that, as with Alice beforehand, it threatens the boy’s life, and — hey presto! — up pops the stranger again with another great bargain: A life for a life. Once again, Anna takes the bait and, once again, the stranger bends the rules. It would be disrespectful to say how, but suffice to say, the stranger is playing 4D chess, and the manifold ways her “help” turns to disaster are quite fantastically inventive, always directing our attention to the creepy carry-on case that Anna brought with her. Does it reinvent the wheel? No, it doesn’t. But instead of lecturing us about the parlous state of the world today, Strippoli is happy to give us a grand guignol morality play that tells us not so much that we’re doomed but reminds us that it’s the things that we might yet do that may throw our lives off-track. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is so fabulous and fantastically devilish here that she should instantly be made illegal, but her performance wouldn’t work without a cast of actors, notably Trinca, who play the reality that makes the sense of rising dread so effective. The message, though, is a simple one in today’s clouded world of AI, deepfakes and disinformation: You’ve really gotta read them Ts & Cs. Title: The SpiralFestival: Venice (Competition)Director: Paolo StrippoliScreenwriters: Paolo Strippoli, Salvatore De ChiricoCast: Jasmine Trinca, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Adriano Giannini, Valeria Bruni TedeschiSales agent: Le PacteRunning time: 1 hr 55 mins