The Embalmer (L’Imbalsamatore)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: D Film: B-
A
fifty-year-old taxidermist who does work for organized crime becomes interested
in a young 24-year-old man in The
Embalmer (2002), a dark new film by Italian director Matteo Garrone. At first, it seems like the interest of Peppino
(Ernesto Mahieux) in Valerio (Valerio Foglia Manzillo) is just a gay
infatuation, but something more morbid also seems to be at work here.
Peppino
begins by hiring Valerio by offering him more money than he would get as a
waiter, then starts to get him involved in group sex escapades and discovers
that Valerio has a weakness in being too nice and too willing to drink
alcohol. This is further complicated
when Deborah (Elisabetta Rocchetti) catches Valerio’s interest more than
Peppino would like and then things get more twisted.
The
letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image is grainy and seems to have been made more so, for
whatever reason, in a way that makes the production almost look like it was
shot on some kind of HD almost, but it sometimes creates a kind of mood thanks
to cinematographer Marco Onorato. The
color is somewhat desaturated, but not obnoxiously so. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic
surrounds, but it is uncertain if the original mix had more tracks, as the
Dolby Digital in the end credits is generic and never tells us anything. This is decent sound, though. The only extras include production notes, a
very brief biography of Garrone and six trailers for First Run features, including
this one.
The idea
of the short Italian guy named Peppino, or Pepé for short, is nearly a
stereotype. Pairing him opposite a tall
guy he thinks of as a “God” offers obsession beyond sex, into power and death,
something his title occupation can push him more into believing as in
sensitivity to working with dead animals (and also dead people as it turns out)
becomes clinical and cold on levels beyond corpse temperature. Still, the Ugo Chiuti/Garrone/Massimo Gaudioso
screenplay is believable throughout and though there are limitations to the
story and what happens, The Embalmer
is still worth a look.
- Nicholas Sheffo
