That Malicious Age

That Malicious Age
Italian Quella Età Maliziosa
Directed by Silvio Amadio
Written by Silvio Amadio
Piero Regnoli
Produced by Domizia Cinematografia
Starring
Cinematography Antonio Maccoppi
Edited by Silvio Amadio
Music by Roberto Pregadio
Distributed by HVW Focus (West Germany)
Release dates
  • 11 March 1975 (Italy)
  • 3 April 1981 (West Germany)
  • 23 December 1981 (France)
Running time
 87 minutes
Country Italy
Language Italian

That Malicious Age (Italian: Quella età maliziosa) is a 1975 Italian erotic drama film co-written and directed by Silvio Amadio. It features Nino Castelnuovo and Gloria Guida.

Plot

Napoleone (Castelnuovo) is an artist bored of his married life and applies to work as a gardener at a summer mansion. On his way to Elba, he meets an attractive teenage girl (Guida) who attempts to seduce him and when he gets to the mansion, he learns that she is Paola, his employers' daughter living with her mother (Anita Sanders) and stepfather (Silvio Amadio). The mother is soon attracted to Napoleone but he has a growing affection for Paola, fuelled by her flirtatious behavior and his passion eventually turns into violence against a mentally disturbed fisherman (Mimmo Palmara) courting Paola.

Cast

Critical reception

The film was generally badly received by critics. Italian critic Paolo Mereghetti described the film as "unresolved", noting the ambitious efforts to combine melodramatic tension, psychological introspection and class morality but concluding that these aspirations ended up getting lost in long sequences of silences and panoramic views. The review of the website LogTake pointed out the unconvincing "awkward juxtaposition (rather than contamination) of genres" of the film, which starts as a commedia erotica abruptly turning to drama, and refers to the film as "uncertain, confused, approximate, annoyingly misogynistic".