Federico (Sergio Castellitto) parks outside this building and waits for his girlfriend Francesca (Chiara Castelli) to appear so he can whisk her away. She is moving out of her old boyfriend’s apartment, and as she says her goodbyes Federico sits and frets, worried the locals in this rather rougher part of town than he’s used to will try and drag him from the car and assault him. This doesn’t happen, though as he wakes from his dark reverie he notices a fat bloke has just pissed on the vehicle for his own amusement, which makes him want Francesca to show up all the more. Finally, she appears and they wind up back at his place for the evening, but before they can go to bed she insists he retrieve something she has forgotten…
That being a tube of anti-cellulite cream she left behind in the other flat, so after a lot of persuasion Federico begins his fateful journey into the night. This film was based on a novel by Tiziano Sclavi, who would be better known in cult circles for the work he penned a couple of years after this, Dellamorte Dellamore, also known as Cemetery Man, an oddball horror item that also played narrative tricks on the audience. Not that you’d notice this at first here, but as the plot wore on it grew apparent all was not right, and not only because when our hero returns to see the ex-boyfriend he finds the door open and on venturing inside, his body in a pool of blood on the floor. The man’s throat has been slit and he immediately thinks Francesca is the culprit.
But is she? He doesn’t stop to consider the other possibilities, that it was a suicide for instance, and instead sets about disposing of the corpse so as not to incriminate his fiancée, chopping it up and stuffing it into a suitcase, though he has trouble with one of the hands sticking out, which will be significant later on. Well, a bit, for there were indications Nero. (note the full stop in the title) was supposed to be a black comedy in a most macabre mood, not that you imagine there would be many feeling their spirits lifted by chuckling along with what started bleak and only became bleaker. Castellitto, a big star in Italy and a cinematic jack of many trades, didn’t even try to leaven the tone, playing the material just about straight.
He had a few opportunities to behave in a slightly crazed manner, but for the most part Federico is buffeted along by events, and the ending made it apparent he was in no way master of his own destiny, and had not been since the very beginning of the movie. That was where the horror qualities were at their most obvious, as the story effectively went full circle, though not in a typical shocker, “they woke up and it was all a dream – or was it?” fashion, more in a crushing display of the inevitability of fate. There was in addition a tendency to blame all Federico’s misfortunes on a woman, for if Francesca had not given in to her vanity (or simply waited till the following day to buy a fresh tube of the cream) then none of this would have unfolded with the same tragic consequences.
That was perhaps the old Italian tendency towards misogyny in their movies rearing its unwelcome head once again, very noticeable when aside from the actress’s physical attractiveness there wasn’t much in her personality that illustrated a good reason to stay with Francesca. Though that may have been the point, as the ex’s suicide highlighted what a miserable existence it would be to be in love with such a negative person, as Federico is fast discovering, not least because of the hellish circumstances he is getting up to his neck in. Those included accidentally killing both a dog and its owner when he tries to bury the body parts on a patch of wasteground, then as if that were not enough falling victim to a blackmailer who proceeds to rape and murder Federico’s mother (offscreen) so he can inherit the insurance to pass on to the criminal, who has burned her house down to boot. What was funny about this? Damn little, though director Giancarlo Soldi mustered a compulsive gloss to the narrative that did have you constantly wondering where it was heading – or how much worse things would get. Music by Francesco Guccini and Mau Mau.
