A pretty Slovenian chambermaid joins a speed-dating club, meets a handsome security guard – and is mysteriously implicated in a crime she can’t remember in this cunningly plotted Italian psychological thriller.
Not so much a genre movie as a movie that switches between genres – and comes out on top.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2010
The Double Hour 2009
La doppia ora
As the title signals, even the clock may be duplicitous in this most cunningly constructed of psychological thrillers. Sonia, a pretty, recent arrival from Slovenia, is working as a chambermaid in a fancy Turin hotel, when she joins a speed-dating club and hits it off with Guido, a hunky security guard. A rapid, full-on introduction to Guido’s world slides into labyrinthine nightmare. Suddenly she is suffering memory blanks and the police seem to be investigating her. What’s she got herself into? When you think you’re figuring that out, new evidence appears to throw your picture out. Then, just when you think the film has gone one twist too far, you realise it hasn’t at all: what’s been going down around Sonia actually makes complete sense, and you’ve been entertained by experts. — BG.
“A real word-of-mouth, talking-point movie, which will appeal especially to connoisseurs of clever mystery scripts.” — Lee Marshall, Screendaily