Butler's Cinema Scene

“THE DOUBLE HOUR”  My rating: B (Opening July 29 at the Tivoli)

95 minutes | No MPAA rating

Brain teasers don’t get much more gnarly than “The Double Hour,” an Italian thriller that will leave you not knowing if you’re coming or going.

It begins with a speed dating session in which Guido (Filippo Timi), a hunky ex-cop, meets Sonia (Ksenia Rapport), a red-headed hotel maid. He has a history of seducing women he meets at these events, but the shy Sonia, who seems to be nursing a quiet hurt, appeals to his romantic side.

After a couple of dates he decides to show her his job as the lone security guard at a sprawling estate whose millionaire owner is rarely at home. He turns off the high-tech security equipment so that he and Sonia can have the grounds to themselves.

Their romantic tryst is interrupted by masked thugs who hold the lovers captive while they strip the place of its priceless art. One of the crooks tries to molest Sonia, Guido springs to the rescue and….

…and Sonia finds herself back at her hotel job, a fresh scar on her forehead. The bullet that killed Guido, we learn, passed through his body and struck her in the face.

Sonia’s grieving is only made worse by the accusations of Guido’s old police partner. This cop smells a rat, suggesting that Sonia may have deliberately planned to meet Guido at that night of speed dating, thus opening the door for her criminal confederates to ransack the estate.

And what’s with weird sightings of the dead Guido on a closed-circuit hotel surveillance system? Is he not really dead? Is he a ghost? Is Sonia losing her mind?

And then Sonia awakens in a hospital room, the faithful Guido at her bedside. What the hell…?

Ultimately Giuseppe Capatondi’s film delivers the answers, though not without resorting to a gimmick not unlike that notorious year of “Dallas” which we learned in the season finale actually took place in one of the character’s heads.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter if you buy “Double Hour” as narrative because it’s so gripping from a pure character standpoint. Both Rapport and Timi won top acting honors at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, and they are well deserved.

Walking a dramatic tightrope such as the one provided by writers Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo is no easy task, but these two charismatic performers pull it off without a hitch.

I was particularly taken with Rapport, who deftly negotiates the character’s multiple layers of personality. She’s one of those actresses who can look beautiful one moment and quite unremarkable the next, and she makes of Sonia a compelling but troubling cauldron of seething fears and lusts leavened with a big dose of melancholy.

Some critics have compared “Double Hour” to the French thriller “Tell No One.” I don’t think it’s quite that satisfying, but it’s pleasures are nothing to sneeze at.

| Robert W. Butler