Christian De Sica stars in New Giallo-Comedy
TORONTO – Specifically speaking, the classic “whodunnit” story refers to the golden age of mystery fiction of the 1920s and 30s, led by British authors like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. But there have been variations on the sleuth narrative for virtually millennia, which might also account for some of Italy’s obsession with crime drama.
And while Italian cinema mastered the horror-crime thriller subgenre (“Giallo”), its influences may have gone beyond Agatha Christie or Edgar Allen Poe. Perhaps even beyond fiction itself. The Medici-Pazzi crime conspiracy, for instance, has consumed Italian historians for more than 500 years, with forensic investigators deciphering encrypted letters to this day.
Italians have always loved an elaborate puzzle, which is why Eros Puglielli’s latest Giallo-comedy – Agatha Christian: Crime on the Snow – is hardly the outlier or surprise hit that some think it is. The eponymous title is an obvious reference to the British Crime Novelist, played by Christian De Sica. But the film also gathers an all-star ensemble cast for the Italian murder mystery, which includes Paolo Calabresi, Lillo Petrolo, Sara Croce and Chiara Francini.
The plot: A group of gaming magnates invite a criminologist to a luxury villa in the Aosta Valley for the launch of a new board game. And when the inventor and patriarch of the family is murdered during the event, a slow burn investigation begins – headed by De Sica’s sharp-witted gumshoe.
All the typical tropes are neatly applied here as a classic mystery thriller unfolds, giallo-comedy style. Yet in some ways, the film feels less Italian than it does American, taking many of its cues from two 2019 films: Knives Out (starring Daniel Craig) and Murder Mystery (starring Adam Sandler). The main difference being De Sica’s Roman interpolations which have defined much of his comedic film career.
Director Eros Puglielli even confirms that the film is a deliberate departure from the traditional “Cinepanettone” genre – referring to formulaic Christmas movies released purely for holiday entertainment.
“I wouldn’t call it a traditional holiday comedy. It’s not a film with a thin plot and scattered sketches. Here, the comedy and the mystery plot are intertwined; they move in perfect synchronicity. It’s a different model, a comedy that leverages the structural integrity of a whodunnit”. By “leveraging the structural integrity”, Puglielli is pointing to a new approach to comedy. Whereas the national brand of humour tends to lean on slapstick and local in-jokes, Agatha Christian anchors its humour to the plot, enabling its cast to focus on complex character dynamics.
With a cogent narrative framework and beautiful production design – not typical of Italian comedies – this Italian whodunnit is unpredictable in more ways than one.
Images courtesy of Medusa Film
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
