Teorema (1968)

Saw Teorema (AKA Theorem).  It was directed by Pier Pasolini, he of the Salo fame.  This film focuses on a middle-class family who welcomes a mysterious male guest into their house.  The maid is fascinated by him, opening the film with a suicide attempt in an effort to attract his notice.  Next, the son of the family finds himself strangely attracted to the smiling guest.  Then the mother, daughter, and even the father are seduced by this man.  He awakens strange, intense passions within them and then leaves the film entirely and leaves the family to deal with the fallout of his visit.

Before the credits, we see cameramen interviewing factory workers, talking to them about political revolution and how the middle class, now free from religion and beginning to free itself from capitalism, must now empathize with the common man.  We establish the film as taking place in the post-modern intellectual sphere we find ourselves in now: the church is corrupt, the government is corrupt, soon even intelligentsia itself will be revealed to be corrupt.  What role can we play now to give our lives meaning?

This film sort of absurdly posits sexual/romantic experiences as a source of meaning.  The free love revolution was close at hand and we spend half of the film watching the various characters deal with their romantic involvement with the mysterious guest.  Some of the family it destroys.  The mother is awoken to the emptiness in her life, but is given nothing to fill that void with.  Then again, others of the family find transcendence and the profoundest sort of meaning as a result.

The film is spare and strange.  It's an art film first, with heightened artificiality.  There's inexplicably silent sequences, clumsy overdubbing, and cuts to some hellish black desert.  (Apparently this film is part of Pasolini's "Mythical" cycle - perhaps this connects to the other films.  Pigsty (of the same cycle) seems to feature this desert in the trailer))  The various seductions are fun in a smutty sort of way, but I was gratified to see the fall-out play out as well.  Many absurdists are content to undermine the middle class by punching below the belt, but I felt this film had somewhat more compassion.  Not only are the hypocrisies of this middle-class family exposed, but then they must live with it.  Interesting.