Saw Ossessione, an Italian film based on a noir book. Being a noir plot, you know there's gonna be murder most foul and femmes most fatale. In addition to all of this, I thought the main character guy was pretty attractive, so that was nice.
The plot is that a drifter (the main character) comes to a small bar/gas station rest stop in rural Italy run by a husband/wife team. The husband in much older and fatter than his wife, but he seems to love her. She is hard-working and stern. The drifter immediately starts making eyes at the wife of the house who makes starts making eyes right back and quickly engineers a way to keep the drifter at her bar. We now have a classic love triangle: the oblivious husband, the scheming wife, and the hot third party.
The film is pretty good. It's shot in a naturalistic style with enough Hitchcockian heightened drama to keep it interesting. There's another drifter character who urges the main character to move on, away from the wife's messy designs and to join the navy. I read these scenes as being homoerotic because it amused me to do so. The film is really most interested in watching this attractive drifter brood and be tormented. He's pretty good at that though, so it's time well spent.
The film is more slow-paced and natural than most noirs, but its noir roots are where its heart is. There's not a lot of fedoras or detectives, but dames get slapped and schemers scheme. It surprised me a bit with the slower pacing, but it was interesting. Sort of Maltese Falcon meets Call Me By Your Name. It didn't shock me or blow me away (what does?) but it's a solid film.
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