When the Night

On a month-long alpine retreat without her husband, Marina and her young son are rescued by her landlord Manfred after an accident. Manfred, a misogynistic mountaineer who was abandoned by his wife, proceeds to transfer his hatred of womankind onto Marina. Despite the ill treatment, Marina finds herself drawn toward the abusive mountaineer, à la Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away. Fifteen years later, Marina’s fixation has grown into an obsession, and she returns—only to find Manfred reunited with his wife. Italian writer-director Comencini’s (The Missing Pages) narrative suffers from bone-dry prose, hasty shifts in tense and POV, and too many beat-by-beat chronicles of her characters’ interior thoughts. Despite the interesting juxtaposition of this prose with the tropes of a romantic potboiler, the author’s rarefied, minimalistic approach is austere to the point of alienation. Her protagonists remain ciphers, their motivations and desires unfathomable. The author’s own film of her novel was released in Italy in 2011. (Apr.)