Into the Labyrinth
Dustin Hoffman is back – in an Italian horror film featuring a killer rabbit.
Mind games: Valentina Bellè
Back in 1972, Dustin Hoffman starred in an Italian romantic comedy called Alfredo, Alfredo, in which his dialogue was dubbed. Forty-nine years later, the actor returns to Rome to star alongside Toni Servillo in a stylish psychological horror film. Although 22 years Servillo’s senior, Hoffman looks in much better shape and reminds us how much we’ve missed him. In spite of the strangeness all about him, he gives Into the Labyrinth a grounding in solid everyday reality. He’s compassionate and avuncular, but above all he’s believable. Servillo, meanwhile, ushers in one of his idiosyncratic displays of attention-grabbing, playing a sweating, dishevelled, chain-smoking, malodourous private investigator who, in spite of everything, exudes charisma.
As for the film’s time and place, it could be set anywhere at any point in the last decade or so. The technology is strictly mix-and-match, as is the film’s geographic character, which sits perfectly with the state of mind of our female protagonist, Samantha Andretti (Valentina Bellè), who was abducted by a rabbit on the way to school. She is now in St Catherine’s hospital and the kindly Dr Green (Hoffman) is there to unpick her memories, in an attempt to identify her kidnapper. The rabbit thing is greeted with suitable incredulity by Servillo’s rumpled Bruno Genko, who smells a rat, not a bunny. Both he and Green are squirrelling away at the mystery as the producer-director Donato Carrisi weaves the distortions of Samantha’s memory in with the grubby investigation proceeding outside the hospital walls.
In essence a police procedural with knobs on, Into the Labyrinth plays fast and loose with the everyday rules of cinema. Dustin Hoffman speaks American, Servillo talks Italian and the oppressive red décor of the interiors – not to mention the red ball that Dr Green plays with incessantly – borrow from the Italian tradition of Giallo horror. Mixing elements of Escape Room, David Fincher’s The Game and the Saw franchise with such abduction thrillers as 10 Cloverfield Lane and Room, the film also pays homage to Night of the Lepus and Donnie Darko. This should only really matter to cineastes, while Carrisi paints the screen with clues, allusions, red blood and red herrings. Unfortunately, his film is undone by its very weirdness, its rooting in otherworldly things undermining any genuine suspense. Samantha is unable to garner any empathy as she is largely confined to her hospital bed and cannot remember yesterday, while too many of the other characters are grotesque stereotypes. The real star is Carrisi himself, who gilds every scene with pictorial elegance, supported by an opulent score from Vito Lo Re. But Carrisi’s greatest coup is to secure the services of the 83-year-old Hoffman, although goodness knows why he accepted the offer.
Original title: L'uomo del labirinto.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Toni Servillo, Valentina Bellè, Dustin Hoffman, Vinicio Marchioni, Caterina Shulha, Riccardo Cicogna, Luis Gnecco, Orlando Cinque, Sergio Grossini, Sergio Leone.
Dir Donato Carrisi, Pro Donato Carrisi, Ex Pro Dustin Hoffman and Toni Servillo, Screenplay Maurizio Totti and Alessandro Usai, Ph Federico Masiero, Pro Des Tonino Zera, Ed Massimo Quaglia, Music Vito Lo Re, Costumes Patrizia Chericoni.
Gavila/Colorado Film Production/Rainbow S.p.A.-Parkland Pictures.
130 mins. Italy. 2019. Rel: 19 April 2021. Available on Amazon, Sky, Apple iTunes and Rakuten. Cert. 15.
