Monna Lisa

Anyone else think that Sandro Dori reminded them of Rod Steiger in this short drama? He works in a scrapyard and is an admirer of the Mona Lisa. One evening, a gang of hoodlums turn up and their boss (Victor Cavallo) installs a young hooker in a cabin, chained to the wall, whom he intends to use for his own recreational purposes - "on-demand", if you will. The caretaker is warned to mind his own business, but gradually he begins to try to take care of her (Silvia Ferreri) and to sympathise in the face of her regularly brutal treatment. The thing is, the thugs always arrive en masse and he'd be outnumbered, so what can he possibly do? You certainly don't need to speak much Italian to get the gist of this rather seedy feature, indeed but for some temper tantrums from Cavallo there isn't really much dialogue here at all. Instead we see some effective photography of the darkened and rusting environment used to present us with a suitably ghastly prison where the girl's chances of escape are non-existant but where, thankfully, the unassuming employee - who has a secret or two of his own - has recalled watching "Goldfinger" (1964) in his youth.