| "Autopsy" will come as a pleasant surprise to anyone who has seen Armando Crispino’s slightly inept "The Etruscan Kills Again". Clearly the work of an assured director, the film blends elements of the classic giallo with disorientating sequences conveying an atmosphere of manic hysteria in Rome’s baking August sun. Mimsy Farmer plays a research student in a pathology lab writing a dissertation on the differences between genuine and staged suicides and being given plenty of raw material by a wave of luridly presented examples of both. Aided by a troubled priest, her investigation draws her on to dangerous ground close to home.
Although neither lead was ever in danger of troubling the Oscar committee, Farmer in particular is quietly impressive as the young doctor pushed to the brink of madness--a ball of sexual frustration, exhaustion and mistrust. The mystery plays out in a suitably intricate manner, but the most striking aspect of the film might well be the unusual attention to detail. From the early montage of inventive suicides to the scene in Eternal City’s bizarre Museo Criminologico to Farmer’s boyfriend’s slideshow of vintage Parisian erotica, the painstaking art direction is worthy of Sergio Martino or early Dario Argento. |
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