secret ceremony ★ 1968 ★ joseph losey
this movie is a good fever dream where you are so confused but at the same time, having a good ride.
leonora, a prostitute who mourns her daughter, meets cenci, a girl who has lost her mother and calls leonora ‘mommy’ because she resembles her mother. cenci takes leonora to her mansion, who’s only resident is cenci. soon, leonora will learn about cenci’s current life with her two aunts and her filthy step-dad…
the shots and the costumes are preciousssssss. this film is a work of art idc. the colors look gorgeous through the screen and also transmit this surreal feeling thanks to the design of the mansion’s indoors. the playful and child-like behavior of cenci sends these flickering red lights of something being wrong but we don’t see the real harm. throughout the film there’s not a sense of coherency because the characters themselves feed the delusions both of the protagonist are in. leonora attempts to ground herself a few times and understand what’s going on, but, since cince is a girl who prefers to play inside her bubble and reject whatever breaks her comfort, leonora plays the part of a mother once again and have a better life with a girl who clearly begs for a mother figure but also shows the consequences of an unresolved trauma from her childhood.
this review in letterbox summarizes the film pretty well: “of course a man has to come in and try to ruin an incestuous not really incestuous relationship between an older woman and her girltoy. can women have anything.” and i agree.
the man —who’s name i don’t remember lol— is our character who gets to break the fragile relationship between leonora and cenci by having an unhealthy attention for the latter. i find it funny how everyone, even cenci’s aunts, are surprised by leonora’s resemblance to cenci’s mother, but there’s no more digging into this weird coincidence. but either way, the dude wants a life with cenci, and how could the fucker wouldn’t when he states what he has done to cenci and how he still takes advantage of the girl even after her mother dies, and takes cenci’s behavior as her wanting it. imho, he is the ‘thing’ that makes us see cenci as this girl with ugly intentions and the usual young ‘nymph’ that men seem to be obsessed with, when the truth is that cenci begs for a figure to love her and protect her, but her being abused in her younger years have morphed that love as a need of something sexual.
i looooved the ending. who doesn’t love fed up women being the ones punishing the filthy men in these type of films? i support u leonora!!!