Here’s a modest and modestly effective Italian thriller with a supernatural twist.
“The Double “Hour” takes its title from those “magical” points in the day when the clock’s two numbers match — 11:11, for instance, or as the Europeans keep time, “23:23.” Make a wish at that moment and it just might come true.
That’s one of the few charming things Guido ( Filippo Timi ) tells Sonia (Kseniya Rappoport ) on their first date.
They’ve met at a speed-dating gathering in Turin. She’s from Eastern Europe, working as a chambermaid in a local hotel. He’s a somewhat morose ex-cop who works as a security guard at a stately private home.
She’s struggling to get by, but succeeding. If only that hotel guest hadn’t hurled herself out a window to her death while Sonia was cleaning the young woman’s bathroom.
He’s given to empty sexual encounters, filling some unknown void in his life.
When Sonia meets Guido, there’s a wonderful wariness in their encounters. First time feature director Giuseppe Capotondi makes this romance a tentative thing, as if first one and then the other has his or her doubts.
This 2009 film is blessed with performances that have real body heat, lives that feel lived in. But if “Double Hour” is not a film totally wrapped in its gimmick, it certainly is reliant on it to get at something deeper and more troubling.
That “something” is Guido’s death and Sonia’s reaction to it. She hallucinates, imagines she sees him, hears him. Is he a literal ghost, or is she feeling remorse or guilt over his death? Can she/will she bring him back with a wish?
Capotondi leans heavily on his writers’ gimmick as he upends the ultra-realistic nature of the movie with a string of twists you have to see to believe. Or not believe.
Intrigues pile up, along with plot non-sequiturs. But all the while, our leads — Timi and Rappoport — make it all so real that we don’t mind.
“The Double Hour,” opening Friday at the Enzian, is not a neat and tidy thriller. It is a most engrossing one, commanding our attention even as the filmmaker tries to slip this or that hole in the plot past us. We may not be totally fooled, but anybody who appreciates a thriller that makes us reason through the story threads will certainly feel a “Nice try” is in order.
MPAA Rating: Unrated, with explicit sex and some violence.
Cast: Kseniya Rappoport (Sonia), Filippo Timi (Guido)
Credits: Directed by Giuseppe Capotondi, written by Alessandro Fabri, Stefano Sardo and Ludovica Rampoldi. Produced by Francesca Cima and Nicola Giulano. A Samuel Goldwyn release. Running time: 1:35
