Movie Review
‘PIZZICATA” is word made up from the names of two dances: the Pizzica (dance of love) and the Tarantella (dance of death) and both music and dance figure strongly in this film, set in the Salentino region of Southern Italy during World War II – a place where all the men have glowering good looks and all the women go barefoot, even in the fields.
“Pizzicata,” which opens today at Film Forum, is a pretty, sensual film that reminds you how even the smallest gestures – especially during a whirling hands-off folk dance – can be powerfully erotic in a society that rigidly forbids physical contact between unmarried men and women.
Unfortunately, because of a predictable plot, occasionally crude writing and uneven acting, “Pizzicata” is mainly enjoyable on the level of a travelog or ethnography.
Tony (Fabio Frascaro) an American pilot of Italian parentage who has parachuted from a crashing bomber, is found by the three daughters of a widowed farmer. The family takes him in and hides him from the fascist police.
He and the middle daughter, Cosima (Chiara Torelli) fall in love but Pasquale (Paola Massafra), the obnoxious son of the local rich man – and the only young man in the whole village who has not gone off to the war – wants to marry her.
If this were a Hollywood movie you would be sure that all would end up just fine. But it is made clear from the start that the film will end with the “pizzica tarantata” – a strange, disturbing dance of female grief that looks a lot like possession and is believed by the local peasants to be an affliction caused by a tarantula bite between the legs.
PIZZICATA 1/2Written and directed by Edoardo Winspeare. Starring Chiara Torelli, Cosimo Cinieri and Fabio Frascaro. In Salentino Italian dialect with English subtitles. Running time: 93 minutes. Unrated. At Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St.