Film

Sérail (1976)

Director: Eduardo de Gregorio

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

As a scriptwriter (mainly for Rivette and Bertolucci), de Gregorio repeatedly subverted narrative expectations, and here - his first feature as writer/director - he indulges in the perilous but pleasing game of developing the characters played by Ogier and Pisier in the film-within-the-film of Céline and Julie. An English novelist (Redgrave) is lured, with disconcerting and disorienting results, into purchasing a crumbling mansion by what he imagines are the deliberately 'literary' ploys of its housekeeper (Caron) and two mysterious, lurking women. Richly photographed, what starts as a slightly self-conscious exercise develops, after many deceptive twists, into an intriguing and gratifying sensual entertainment.

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