Teorema (1968)

	Directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini	COUNTRY Italy GENRE Psychological drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Skandalen i Milano RUNNING TIME 98 minutes
	Produced by: Franco Rossellini Manolo Bolognini
	Written by: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
The Visitor	Terence Stamp
Lucia, the mother	Silvana Mangano	½
Paolo, the father	Massimo Girotti
Odetta, the daughter	Anne Wiazemsky	½
Emilia, the maid	Laura Betti
Pietro, the son	Andrés José Cruz Soublette	½
Angelino, the postman	Ninetto Davoli	-

Review

A young and coldly handsome Terence Stamp plays a mysterious visitor to a frigid upper-middle-class Milanese family, awakening sexual urges in each and every one of them before disappearing. This supposedly psychological drama is heavy on attempted allegory and symbolism, but so aesthetically and technically weak that the filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò), might as well have told you the story over a Martini. Well, story is going a little too far – Teorema is not a story; it's an idea, a concept. In Pasolini’s view, sexuality is asensual and mystical – all about guilt, repression, and dysfunction. It’s all tied in with traditional Catholicism, of course, but it’s not particularly well motivated in the film. To be fair, nothing much is motivated in Teorema, from Stamp’s appearance and the family's debility, to the abrupt cuts and jarring location shifts. Everything is internalised, which conveniently frees Pasolini from the hardest part of directing: visualising what you actually want to convey. His lazy, inept arthouse aesthetic clutters his sensibilities to the point that you almost forget he's really just preoccupied with sex.