TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
christopher-underwood
With just two conflicting reviews on the site and a low overall score I was not expecting much from this but couldn't resist the presence of Gloria Guida. Much to my surprise I enjoyed it a lot. The opening sequence is inaccurately described in one of those reviews but does represent a stunning opening. It also gives the film a certain edge that it retains till the end. The imbalance between the sexes as portrayed in Italian films is nothing new but dealt with very well here. Small cast on the seeming lovely isle of Elba intermingle and create drama out of very little. Gloria Guida performs particularly well and does a really good job in the crowded bus at the beginning and in an implied incestuous scene later on, both scenes played without her speaking, just with her eyes and slight movement of the mouth. Everyone performs well and if the randy fisherman seems to overact it fits perfectly within the strange tale. Needless to say Gloria looks wonderful throughout and was very brave to go naked in the pine forest.
morrison-dylan-fan
Despite having seen her name mentioned in a number of IMDb reviews over the years,I have somehow never got round to catching a glimpse of Gloria Guida.With Christmas coming up,I started to search around for films which I could send to a friend as a gift,which led to me finally setting my sights on Gloria Guida.The plot:Thrown out of his house by his wife,a painter called Napoleone decides to look in the job section of a newspaper,in the hope of finding a job as soon as possible.Spotting an ad for a gardener,Napoleone goes to meet a woman,who says that she needs a gardener who can keep everything tidy at the villa based on an isolated island,where she lives with her husband,and a teenage daughter called Paola.Arriving on the island,Napoleone runs into a beautiful women,who completely ignores the attention that he's giving her.Later on that night,Napoleone spots the mysterious women getting undressed in front of a window.As Napoleone's passions start to heat up,he soon discovers that the mysterious women is actually Paola,who is just about to enter a malicious age.View on the film:Backed by a playful score from Roberto Pregadio,co-writer/ (along with Piero Regnoli) editor/ director Silvio Amadio and cinematographer Antonio Maccoppi give the movie a light & fluffy appearance,with Amadio and Maccoppi surrounding the villa with lush plants,which also allow for the flesh shown by a ravishing Gloria Guida to truly shine.Allowing the viewer to sink into the films breezy atmosphere,the writer's hit a delightfully left-field note,by giving the title a surprisingly harsh,Giallo-inspired (the rich wanting to keep their hands clean of any blood) ending,as Napoleone finds that he is about to discover the effects of Paola entering her malicious age.
lazarillo
A man (Nino Castellneuvo) takes a gardening job at an isolated estate on the island of Elba, working for a widowed woman (Anita Sanders) and her teenage daughter (Gloria Guida). Both women tease him mercilessly.The mother takes off all her clothes in front of him for some reason, but then pushes him away when he tries to embrace her. The daughter practically dry-humps him on a crowded bus, does a bizarre dancing strip-tease for him through an open window,and nearly causes an accident by giving him a "foot-job" while he's driving. A fourth character also appears for some reason in the form of drunken lecherous local fisherman who also lusts after the Guida character. He does a bizarre courtship dance (while apparently masturbating) outside her window. Finally, our hero consummates his relationship with one of the women, resulting in a completely implausible turn of events and tragic consequences for all involved.Director Silvio Amado made two excellent and sexy gialli, "Amuck" and "Smile Before Death", before falling into to more routine potboilers like this and "Peccati di Juventud" (also with Guida). These latter movies were just generically dumb rather than deliciously absurd like his earlier gialli and thus exponentially less interesting. Gloria Guida, along with Ornella Muti and Jenny Tamburi, was one of three main "lolitas" of Italian exploitation films of this era (although it should be said that none of the three was actually underage in real-life as was the case in many high-brow French "art" films of the era). Guida was the least talented of the three--this movie doesn't hold a candle to "Smile Before Death" or Fernidand DeLeo's similarly themed "La Seduzione", not because Guida isn't as easy to look at as the star of those two films, Jenny Tamburi, but because the latter runs rings around Guida acting-wise. Guida herself would get a lot better in movies like "Being Twenty", "Blue Jeans" and even "Peccati di Juventud", but here she has all the sex appeal of your run-of-the-mill beauty pageant contestant (she was Miss Teen Italy of 1974). Of course, there is the one memorable scene where she runs off into the woods leaving a trail of clothes behind her. . .This is not bad movie, but it's not very interesting either. (I also should mention that the IMDb info. given here is incorrect--Kirstin Baker, the American actress from "Friday the 13th Part II, is NOT in this movie. Nor is Rosemary Dexter or Corrado Panni as far as I can tell).
