Beach House (1977)

Director: Sergio Citti
Writers: Vincenzo Cerami and Sergio Citti, based on a short story by Vincenzo Cerami
Stars: Jodie Foster, Mariangela Melato, Michele Placido, Luigi Proietti, Paolo Stoppa, Ugo Tognazzi, Franco Citti and Catherine Deneuve

Index: The First Thirty.

After Moi, fleur bleue, a picture in which Jodie Foster acted in French, came Casotto, a picture in which she acts in Italian. However, I believe she was dubbed because French Foster sounds like English Foster speaking French, but Italian Foster sounds like someone else. Also, she took the role “almost on a dare”, so says Wikipedia Italy, rather than because she was living there.

I’d love to know a lot more about the movie, but it’s not an easy one to search for, not least because two of the top twenty results for it are my review of Moi, fleur bleue posted this week. Its Italian Wikipedia page is the best I can find, but it doesn’t explain the cultural humour that is most crucial to understanding the film.

At least it explains the title. Most obviously, Casotto means Beach House, which is a changing room that’s communal in nature. People take turns to get changed for the beach outside and leave their stuff on hooks inside. However, it’s also apparently slang for both a brothel and a tangled comic situation, which makes sense. It grows in comedy as it goes, characters starting their own plot strands that slowly intertwine, those plot strands often sexual in nature.

Almost the entire film unfolds inside one of these casotti. The camera enters at the start of a day, the casotto empty, and stays there until a sudden storm brings everyone in at once for a grand finalé that gradually dissipates as each character leaves until it’s empty once more. In between, characters constantly go in and out. A more ambitious filmmaker might have seen an opportunity for limited takes, but I saw no indication that it ever came to mind. It isn’t a static camera but there are many edits.

Perhaps the cleverest cinematic touch is the fact that the first character into the casotto is a voyeur—partway through he literally drills a hole in the two walls that adjoin other casotti—setting the stage for us to be voyeurs too. I’d bet money that there’s cleverness in the script too, each set of characters feeling acutely like a parody of a different aspect of Italian life.

I simply don’t have the cultural background needed to grok that. Almost everything made sense but I bet I’m missing all the nuance that an Italian would just know. It would be akin to an Italian watching Porterhouse Blue or maybe Life of Brian, grasping the plot but also missing all the British cultural nuance.

I’ll introduce you to the characters, at least as they first appear; many end up leaving their plot strand to join a different one. There’s one who’s apparently British, though I completely failed to notice that. To me, he’s a dude with a flamboyant moustache and two penises. Yes, I just said that. We see it very clearly, just as we see a lot of a lot of these actors, most of whom were working for free. Italians, however, know that he’s a British priest. How? I have no idea.

There’s a team of ten women with a rotund male coach who’s so strict that they even get changed to whistle blows. I have no idea what sport they play. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Two biker chicks, Giulia and Bice, are there to meet and seduce a lawyer, Alfredo Cerquetti, for an insurance payment but he’s wearing a chastity belt, perhaps for religious reasons, given how we end up in a theological discussion late into the film. I would like to know a lot more about the why behind these stories.

However, some are straightforward. There’s a new couple who just want to have sex, which never happens because they have awful luck. A couple of horny young men, Gigi and Nando, want to sleep with the two girls they brought with them, but the girls shift attentions to two fitness freak soldiers who are likely gay, even without Zaza the chihuahua to make it clear. Do they end up with the two muscle men from later? Nobody ends up with the Hare Krishnas.

Jodie Foster shows up half an hour in as part of a bizarre family plot. She’s supposedly three months pregnant and unable to abort for some medical reason. Her grandparents aim to pair her off with someone quickly enough that he’ll believe he’s the father. They have brought an idiot cousin along to do that but but he’s too busy eating so they shift their attentions to a character from a different plot strand.

The funniest scenes for me tie to that shift, because both sides want the exact same thing but con each other to get it. A whole story is spun up around Toto Angeletti, who’s clearly not real, which both sides go along with, not realising the other is aware. It’s a great scene, perhaps matched only by a surprise slapstick moment when Gigi runs for the beach only to be knocked senseless by a passing canoe. Gigi Proietti is surely the best reason to watch.

Foster is good here but Teresina is a passive role that doesn’t offer her much opportunity. Too often, the humour is in what’s happening around her. For instance, there’s one scene in which she’s trying to seduce Vincenzino with a ploy about sunscreen for her back. However, he’s just stuffed fried chicken down his trunks and he’s too busy trying to stop the family dog from eating it to concentrate on her. She’s lost in that scene, really just a side prop.

There are a lot of worthy moments but that comes from the film being built out of them. It seems to me that as many miss as hit but then I’m not Italian. Maybe every one of the misses has real grounding in Italian culture and locals laughed their asses off while I sat lost.

Context is everything. I saw Wayne’s World 2 on release but didn’t get the John Connor joke because I hadn’t seen Terminator 2 yet. Clearly everyone else had and the audience erupted in laughter. Had I seen this when it played in the retrospective of Italian comedy at the Venice International Film Festival in 2010, I think that sort of thing would have happened a lot.

And, because of that, maybe I’m looking too deeply. Most characters leave the casotto to go swimming in the sea, for instance, but not one character returns with even a hint of water. Is that comment on the role of casotti in Italian society or just a goof as they blew the budget on merkins and shot in a studio in Rome?

The only scene that truly invites a deep dive is Gigi’s surreal dream sequence. He begins to count sheep, then changes to naked women—a outdoors shoot that drew enough attention to prompt police intervention. Much of it makes sense but it gets more obscure, with Catherine Deneuve welcome but confusing as Naivety.

This film felt like an oddity while watching, but it’s stayed with me. It could be an edgy but frenetic stage play. If only I understood more.