TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Eliakim48 This is a story about three young kids, two girls, Lara and Sylvia (12) and one boy, Fabrizio (18), who have some very interesting and intense personal interactions, during a summer vacation. They are the only characters in the movie. The setting is a remote, forested and hilly/mountainous area, adjacent to a very small community.Lara met Fabrizio for the first time the previous summer. She has been looking forward to seeing him again. They had agreed to meet again and Lara had wondered if Fabrizio would forget.When they meet and get some things they stashed away, the previous summer, Lara notices that Fabrizio has changed, seemingly a bit more distant and different in some way, and he keeps looking at her in a different way; he notices her budding sexuality. She sort of feels a little bit differently about him, too, but thinks it's a good feeling. And she feels that he can see right into her and knows what she is thinking, which somewhat unnerves her.But, Fabrizio also seems to have turned meaner and more abrupt towards Lara, first being nice and then pushing her away. He wants her to play some of the games and fun things and then he wants her to get lost and not bother him. She alternates between being happy, having fun to crying and wondering what's going on. It's confusing for Lara, but she likes him, regardless.After several days, they go into a cave they found. Fabrizio wants to explore it, but Lara is afraid. After traveling a ways in, Fabrizio pretends to be lost, not able to find his way out. Lara is scared and cold. Fabrizio comforts and holds her, backing up to the wall of the cave. They both slowly sink down to the ground, Lara remaining in Fabrizo's embrace. After a moment, Fabrizio starts removing her jacket and reaches for the buttons on her blouse. She asks what he's doing. He says he wants to see her body. Saying nothing more, she acquiesces and gazes intently into his eyes, while he proceeds to remove her blouse. He removes all her clothes and then gently rubs his hands over her breasts and caresses them, while she gently gasps and breathes erratically. He removes his clothes and she says to be gentle with her. He assures her that he will. Before he has intercourse with her, he goes down on her. Lara says it feels warm and good. Frabrizio then moves himself on top of Lara and has intercourse. At first she says it hurts, but quickly gets over that and is shown rubbing Fabrizio's hair and enjoying his lovemaking. Shortly afterward, it fades out of their lovemaking scene.That is probably the gentlest and sweetest scene of all the nude/sexual scenes, because of the superb acting, and the showing of emotions and facial expressions during lovemaking. It shows Fabrizio at his gentlest, as opposed to other times. So, there is a contrast, with Fabrizio, seemingly from one moment to the next and one time to another time.Sylvia is the "stranger" there, not having been there the prior year and Fabrizio wants to know who she is, when he sees her for the first time. Lara is a beautiful girl, and while Sylvia is also, she is stunningly so, a beautiful looking blond with long hair. However right away, Sylvia is shown to be a very stuck up and self-assured girl (at least on the surface). Lara is a sweet and innocent girl, while Sylvia appears to be neither.Fabrizio gets Lara to convince Sylvia to play with them, when he finds he can't persuade Sylvia. He does this by pretending to be mad at Lara about something (which is common with him) and then saying that he'll forgive her if she gets Sylvia to play with them.Lara does convince Sylvia and almost immediately, Sylvia displaces Lara, in terms of Fabrizio's attentions. The abrupt and mean streak that Fabrizio has, is accentuated by the stuck-up and self-assured nature of Sylvia and they both turn on Lara and make her life miserable, first being friends and then making her a "slave" to their whims and wishes. Lara endures it patiently, although crying at times, while she still has feelings for Fabrizio. We can see the look on Lara's face at times, either disappointed or sad or stunned or frightened -- all because of the games that Fabrizio and Sylvia play on her. Lara even has her doubts about herself, but still remains steadfastly in love with Fabrizio, even while constantly hurt.One absolutely shocking moment, for Lara (and for the audience) is when Lara stumbles upon Fabrizio and Sylvia, both of them completely nude and playing around with each other. Lara is stunned, absolutely stunned, as she had been with Fabrizio, just like that, in the cave. Both Fabrizio and Sylvia show no shame or remorse or contrition, but absolutely boast in showing off to Lara what they are doing (making this all the more stunning and shocking).Sylvia looks at Lara with a very proud look, saying that she knows that Lara wishes she were with Fabrizio, like she is at that very moment, and with glaring eyes towards Lara, grabs Fabrizio's head and pushes it down to her vagina and lays back down to enjoy herself. Lara is shocked, stunned and extremely hurt, all of which you can see on her face. She turns to walk off but Fabrizio commands her to stay and sit just a few feet from them and watch them. Lara obeys and sits down. Fabrizio then proceeds to have intercourse with Sylvia with Lara a mere few feet away, watching. Both Sylvia and Fabrizio look over at Lara occasionally to make sure she's watching and sneer at her.The scene changes with Lara leaning her head towards a tree and quietly sobbing.(more, if I can post later...)

netwallah When Europeans make films about summer holidays, they often view the time and place as liminal zones. Away from home, people are sometimes on some kind of threshold: the first or last happy time, the beginning of maturity, explorations of love, rites of passage. This film is like that. There are only three characters, Laura (Lara Wendel), Fabrizio (Martin Loeb), and Silvia (Eva Ionesco), and the story takes place in the forest near the young people's summer homes. Laura and Fabrizio explore the forest and discover high in the wooded hills a ruined "magic" town. Laura is eager to see him after a year apart, and she notes he has changed: he's sullen and withdrawn and increasingly given to teasing and tormenting her. The sexual tension between them is complicated by Laura's desperate wish to please him and his pleasure in denying her any sort of satisfaction, even conversation or a modest kiss. They find a cave underneath the castle, and lost down there Fabrizio undresses her and they make love. Just that once. And then he's back to his mean ways of frightening her or tantalizing her. This gets still worse when he discovers Sylvia, in some ways Laura's opposite, confident, blonde, mean, and fearless. She and Fabrizio torment Laura some more, in increasingly cruel ways, threatening to banish her, frightening her, shooting arrows at her, pretending to throw her from a cliff, making her serve them, and forcing her to watch them have sex. Fabrizio seems to get steadily worse, obsessed with living in the forest, imploring Sylvia to stay with him. As the summer is about to end and she's set to leave, he takes them into the cave again and tells Sylvia they're lost—and she panics, weeping and saying she'll go crazy and screaming. She can't hear Fabrizio pleading to let their idyll continue. Laura, who feels confused by Sylvia's vulnerability and by her own diffidence (because she knows the way out), comforts the other girl. And Fabrizio kills her, just as he's killed helpless birds already. What starts as an idyllic season succumbs to a corrosive pattern of conflating sex and power, so experimental cruelty is inevitable, and then the pastoral turns Gothic. Sort of. The movie looks wonderful, with gorgeous photography of woods and meadows and ruins, and the three young actors are very nice to look at. Wendel is soft-looking, anxious, expectant, longing—she's the best actor among them. Loeb is not a petulant adolescent, but he seems dissatisfied with things any boy his age would celebrate forever. Ionesco is an odd mixture of radiance and plainness, her golden hair all cloud-like and her skin fine, but her face is also rather ordinary looking from certain angles, and there's something almost unformed and childlike about it, though her ease before the camera makes it difficult to spot (she was the favourite model for her mother, a famous photographer). Wendel appears more attractive because she's more delicate, more hesitant, and more sympathetic. Finally, it would be nice to see a film about young people discovering sex and love and joy without this sour undercurrent of punishment.

Falconeer Once in a great while a film comes along that is so unique and controversial that one must take notice. Maladolescenza is such a film. A powerful study of that specific time in life when one is still a child, but just at the threshold of becoming an adult. Laura is around 12 years old, hopelessly in love with Fabrizio, a boy a few years her senior. It is summer, and the two spend their days in a fairytale-like forest, where Fabrizio imagines himself King, looking for his Queen that will stay by his side for all time. Even though he treats her savagely, she wants to stay with him. Of course she must return to her home in the evenings. Watching the way Fabrizio terrorizes this sweet girl is not easy. The film takes this route for a while, with only these two characters present. The character of Laura is established as the victim, And Fabrizio is the abusive and controlling bully. Then one day another little girl appears. The doll-like Sylvia is stereotypically beautiful, and just too "glamourous" and sexual for a twelve year old. So much so, that it is downright creepy. Sylvia is also arrogant, and incredibly vicious, in the way that only girls of this age can be. It seems that Fabrizio has met his match in Sylvia, and when the two of them join forces the result is utterly sinister. Together they begin a campaign of sheer terror against the hapless Laura, who just doesn't get the reason for all the cruelty. And when given the chance to walk away from the increasingly painful situation, she doesn't do it, choosing instead to stay, most likely out of the desperate need to belong and to be accepted by her peers. Laura must stand by and watch the boy she loves have sex with the spiteful Sylvia, in one of the films most shocking scenes, as Sylvia asks in a sugary sweet voice, "Don't you wish that it could be you?". In another equally disturbing scene, the pair torture and kill a bird by shooting arrows through the creature while again, Laura watches in silent horror. More disturbing still is that the scene is not simulated. One thing that makes the film so powerful is the way it constantly swings back and forth between scenes very beautiful, such as the kids playing and laughing as pretty music plays, before the scenes change into horror. Throughout the film I kept remembering another film similar in theme; "Lord of the Flies", another film which deals with the dark side of children. However "Maladolescenza" goes further into the theme, examining the absolute horror of "innocent evil." It is filled with so much disturbing imagery that I was tempted to turn it off. However that would have been impossible; The film is morbidly fascinating, strangely hypnotic. Notorious for it's depictions of graphic sex, and deservedly so. The nudity is explicit, and there is not one sex scene that plays without some undercurrent of violence and hostility. The whole thing is violent from start to finish, but the violence is mostly in the psychological mind games and power struggles within the group. In one scene, the much-abused Laura puts on the pretty dress of Sylvia, while the girl is off with Fabrizio, and admires herself in a gold mirror, also belonging to Sylvia. She poses herself in the same arrogant way, wanting so much to be strong, to be in the other girls place. Needless to say the film ends in an equally tragic and horrific way. I wanted to dislike this film, but it's power cannot be denied. I don't know anything about the filmmaker, or what his intentions were. Was he some twisted pervert, or a man with a truly dark and brilliant vision? Who knows? I guess the only thing that matters here is the end result; a film of extreme power, and insight, and beauty. "Maladolescenza" seems to have a profound message concerning the painful experiences of youth. It understands what it is like for a boy Fabrizio's age to be consumed with the conflicting and overwhelming feelings of love, lust, hate, insecurity, and terror at the thought of being left alone. I doubt there will ever be another film quite like this unique work. Certainly a milestone in underground cinema that will unfortunately only be seen by a very select few.

mellies I'm glad to see the controversy of this movie is reflecting on the comments too. That means it's really one of the most controversial movies ever, and only because it deals with underage sexuality in a very graphic manner and their natural cruelty. Only because?!!! Yes, only because of that! Why not?! Or anyone here still think teens or even children have no sexuality, or are not capable of having cruel intentions? In what planet are you living, humm? Talking about the movie, it is really very idyllic, with eerie photography and music, and the only three teenager actors acting like they were in a Greek tragedy. By the way, the "climate" of the film reminds me of long time ago read Greek and Roman pastoral stories. Perhaps, this is not simple coincidence, who knows? As far as I know, the director was never invited to explain what he intended while doing this one. They were very busy, inviting him for prosecution... All in all, it's not a great movie, but is hard to forget once you give it a try, due to the haunting atmospherics and, perhaps, the sexual content, like in those old pastoral poems I mentioned before. On the other hand, it's a shame that movies in this line cannot be done anymore because of hypocrisy, what makes me think whether we are really evoluting, or the contrary...7 out of 10, for it's courageous (although exploitative)and unique portrait of youth.