One of the films I saw at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, when I wasn’t supervising the Regal boxoffice.

It’s a twisty-turny Euro-thriller about Sonia (pictured here, Ksenia Rappoport) who works as a hotel maid and spends her nights going to speed dating events in her northern Italian town of Turin.

One night she meets Guido (handsome Filippo Timi) a widower, who she ultimately starts an affair with. It’s nicely idyllic, two beautifully lit Italian people falling in love, as only they can.

One weekend they’re off to an estate where he seems to work part-time as a security guard, pretending to be rich while the owner is absent. As luck would (or would not) have it, a very sophisticated, armed gang sabotages them, ties them up and begins to loot the estate of its many art and furniture treasures. When done with the looting, the gang’s leader has one more task, which is to assault Sonia. Of course, Guido interferes, getting shot in the process.

SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW….

Sonia makes a recovery, but then begins to see the ghost of Guido around – in her apartment, at work, in photos of places she’s never been with him, etc. She wonders if he really died, or if she’s going crazy, or if it indeed is a paranormal experience – which reverts back to the idea of the “double hour” – defined as the time once per hour when then hour and minute are the same number (5:05, 7:07, etc) and a portal to alternate worlds opens up.

At this point, the story opens up, and the possibility is that she’s in a coma dreaming this whole post-crime scenario. But – there are other worlds, as well: is she an accomplice of the gang, in on the planning of the heist from the beginning, actually having engineered her “meet” with Guido at the speed date?

Or, in a final twist, is it Guido, a former police officer, who has infiltrated the gang and begun this relationship with her to eventually break them all? I’m not sure, I’d have to see it again to really come up with a final workable theory, but I do believe the soft and somewhat sweet ending is a real European treat – and very different from what would have been the Hollywood ending.

“The Double Hour” also has it share of thrills and shocks – from vulnerable woman in the bathtub (you just know when there’s a naked woman in a bathtub and the soundtrack gets quiet, then something’s about to shock you) to apparitions in dark hallways, it certainly delivers in that genre.

I also very much liked the idea that a hotel maid and a security guard could have solidly middle-class lives, which I’m not sure would have ever been presented here in the U.S., at least in the same way.

 

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