| Achingly
romantic and creepy-funny, this funereal fantasy from the director
of La Chiesa (1989) is unlike any Italian film in memory. Rupert
Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, a lonely cemetery caretaker
who just wants to get out of his small town of Buffalora. His assistant
and sole companion, Gnaghi (played by famed French musician Francois
Hadji-Lazaro) is an overweight cretin who speaks only in grunts,
and the dead people outside are rising from their graves as zombies
and trying to have him for breakfast. This situation, coupled with
all his other problems, gives Francesco a real complex. His troubles
are compounded when he meets a series of mysterious women (all played
by the beautiful Anna Falchi) whom he loves before they die tragically.
There is no escape for Francesco in the end, since his world is
a self-contained magical fantasyland — a miniature snow globe,
as it turns out — without exits. Soavi's film is based on a
graphic-novel, Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi, but Soavi's more obvious
influences range from Jean Rollin's La Rose de Fer (1973) to Tim
Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). Barbara Cupisti (of Soavi's
Deliria) has a small role, and the film also benefits from Manuel
de Sica's memorable score and excellent pacing by editor Franco
Fraticelli. This is a film to savor and it will go down as one of
the most striking Italian genre efforts of the decade |
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