Matteo Garrone - Love, Obsession and L'imbalsamatore

Love, Obsession and L'imbalsamatore

In L'imbalsamatore, Garrone reveals a profound understanding of how people struggle to relate to each other on an emotional level, but also of the thin line that separates love from obsession. The film narrates the story of Peppino Profeta (played by Ernesto Mahieux), a taxidermist, who works for the camorra and implants contraband drugs in dead bodies after he carefully prepares them for their final destination. The film opens with Peppino meeting Valerio (Valerio Foglia Manzillo), a handsome waiter who is easily persuaded to give up his job and work as his assistant. The two men develop a special bond that takes them on an unexpected journey. These mens destiny moves towards a deadly and inevitable ending given Peppinos uncontrollable obsession for Valerio, a behavior that he desperately tries to repress. When Deborah (Elisabetta Rocchetti) enters Valerios life, Peppino sees this woman as an intrusion into their relationship and thus tries to eliminate her. By luring Valerio into promiscuous sexual encounters with other women, Peppino aims at sabotaging the couples relationship, inevitably provoking an outburst of jealousy in Deborah and leading Valerio to be confused about rather than convinced about his love for her. One day, Valerio and Deborah decide to leave Peppino and move back to her native northern town in order to start a new life away from the illegal criminal organization and the dangerous influence that Peppino still has on Vittorio. In an expected twist, Peppino meets the couple at Deborahs family home and finds out that Vittorio and Deborah are expecting a baby. In a desperate attempt to convince Valerio to return to Caserta with him, Peppino threatens the woman with a gun, as he blames her for taking Valerio away from him. He dies while in the car, next to his beloved Valerio who agreed to join him only to save Deborahs life.

The relationship between Peppino and Valerio starts like a perfect friendship as they work together and relax together until the harmony of the two mens relationship is disrupted by the presence of a beautiful, sexy woman. In a powerful sequence, Deborah challenges her rival, Peppino, in an argument meant to assert that only she, a woman, can own and control Valerios life. The films conclusion also suggests a similar reading: Valerio and Deborah are meant to be together as their love is socially acceptable whereas Peppinos obsessive desire for another man needs to be destroyed because it is considered forbidden by society. As Valerio and Peppino are in the car and about to leave Deborah behind, gunshots are heard. The scene that follows shows the couple getting rid of Peppinos body, plunged in the dark waters of a river. The real cause of Peppinos death is left unclear, as if Garrone wants to give the viewer the power (and freedom) to decide whether Peppinos death was caused by Valerio or self-inflicted. Despite this ambiguous conclusion, it is still possible to read in Peppinos death the ultimate sacrifice love entails when rage and infatuation prevail but most significantly when it defies its conventional norms. To reinforce this notion, one can point out that it is Deborah, a woman, who challenges Peppinos sexual confidence by mocking his sexuality. In another significant scene, Peppino, Valerio and Deborah are in a hotel room, and Deborah convinces the two men to dress up as women. Peppinos depiction here demands some critical consideration as his heavy make-up vividly makes him resemble a drag queen. The camera follows the three characters from a certain distance, gently moving around their bodies, to allow a complete look at the scene. This visually intriguing scene recalls a similar moment in Fellinis depiction of the festive atmosphere in the Carnevale (Mardi Gras) sequence of I Vitelloni (The Young and the Passionate).

In Fellini's 1953 account of five young men living in the small Adriatic town, Alberto (played by Alberto Sordi) is dressed up like a woman; at the end of the party, he sadly reflects upon a life which slowly drifts away. In that powerful image of Alberto resembling a gloomy clown, Fellini projects his benevolent view of selfish, childish men who, like Alberto, are unable to accept life's responsibilities. Garrone seems to depict a similar drama: Peppino is dressed up as a woman, wearing a costume to emphasize his inability to reveal his real self, his need to mask his real sexual identity. Selfish and afraid to fully and openly embrace his sexuality, surrounded by loneliness and misery, he fails in life, as much as in his performance of a man pretending to be a woman or as a man pretending to be someone else. Peppino is a short, out of proportion man, his physical appearance closely resembling a dwarf, a man who relies on the criminal world to be socially recognized and accepted. The mask he wears, that of the straight man who flirts with women, is also a symbol of a society that creates categories more to contain than to let people express their identity.