Director: Alberto Negrin
Writers: Marcello Coscia, Massimo Dallamano, Franco Ferrini, Stefano Ubezio, Alberto Negrin, and Peter Berling
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In
A young girl’s body is found brutally violated. The investigation into her death uncovers a sordid situation at a nearby private school.
I’ve read a few descriptions of this movie and it seems like there are a variety of versions with events in different orders. I’m not wholly surprised by that since this was a Spanish/Italian/German co-production which means there are potentially translations to English from each version. Also, with six credited screenwriters (IMDB offers a further two for the German version), I’m not surprised that there’s confusion over what the movie’s about or what happens. I’m going to describe the version I watched, although it sounds like “sordid” is a fitting description no matter what version you stumble across.
The movie opens with the girl’s body being dumped from a car. Then the car and a motorcycle leave the scene. Since the movie is trying to keep the identity of the killers a secret the entire time, it constantly cuts back to this motorcycle and car pair to indicate “something is up.” Police arrive at the scene and call in our hero, Inspector Di Salvo, played by Fabio Testi. Since “Testi” is more fun to say, that’s what I’m going to call him.
The girl has deep abdominal wounds caused by a blunt object and the autopsy reveals that she might have been pregnant. I say “might” because the audio wasn’t great and I couldn’t tell if Testi was saying that she was, had been, or at least wasn’t. “This point wasn’t made clear” is the leitmotif of the movie.
The girl went to an elite private school where she was part of a group called “The Inseparables.” The girl’s little sister gives Testi a satchel from the girl’s locker that’s filled with money. Meanwhile, in a shower scene involving several young women in full-frontal nudity, one of the Inseparables starts feeling sick.
Things start moving forward: Testi is abrupt and rude to all his potential subjects, moving the investigation forward more due to accident than through active investigation. The little sister continues to provide him with evidence and information from within the school. As this is happening, someone keeps attacking the surviving Inseparables.
I’m not going to go into more plot details because it is as mystery/thriller and part of the pleasure is seeing that plot unfold, even if it makes no sense in the context of this movie. Obviously the Inseparables are having sex for money—the sick girl is pregnant and has to get an abortion—but the nature of the situation and who’s involved unfolds in an interesting way. I’d almost recommend this as a companion piece to The Silencer since that movie also dealt with moving through a child sex ring member-by-member. The difference here is Trauma actually focuses on the victims and perpetrators as characters instead of the weird drama of their hunter.
On the one hand, I feel like I’m giving the movie short shrift. I was pretty tired when I was watching it and had to rewind several times to catch parts I’d drifted off through. That said, I set my alarm to wake me up because I assumed I’d be falling asleep constantly and largely didn’t need it. The movie is visually interesting enough, establishes questions and ramps up tension largely through the cinematography. Plus it’s over-the-top in a way that borders on camp, but not so much so that you can only take campy pleasure in it. You can watch this as a serious thriller, although with a bit of the surreal logic giallo films tend to have, or you can watch this ironically to riff on and laugh at. The line, I think, is between if you want to be shocked at the attempts at titillation or laugh at the idea that this is titillating.
I’ll admit that I was surprised by the ultimate villain, but most of that was due to the fact that there was no way for you to know that this character was behind everything. Then it turns out there’s a twist, which I’d called early in the movie, only I had the motivation wrong. So I have to give the movie credit for that: it surprised me, although not for the reasons it meant to. Ultimately I’d give this a light recommend. It’s not a movie I’d encourage anyone to seek out, but it’s one of the better ones from these sets. As a flick, it’s watchable, riffable, and executed with more than a minimum of competence. It’s just not anything remarkable.
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