For a long time an obscure and late Giallo hard to find in a regular DVD or Bluray release.
Both the greymarket DVD (see pic below) and the official DVD edition have a too dark
and fuzzy picture. The film may have been dubbed, but Erland Josephson is doing his
own voice that's for sure.

The film, a minimalistic thriller is based on a theatre play and made for RAI Television.
An arty giallo that takes place mostly in just one apartment. The film is unusual and
interesting and something of a mind-fuck, and you've absolutely no idea where this
film is going. Twisting it's way along.
The old DVD was an alternative market edition probably based on a TV Rip and it was
too dark. This DVD Pidax 2024 edition is no better sad to say. Crappy. Maybe the
TV tapes are gone and this TV Rip's the only source that exists ?
You've to adapt your eyes to VHS standard picture and let the story suck you in.

Is this even a giallo, with an artmovie actor as Josephson and maybe also Romand ?
With it's theatrical feeling of the setting ? Yes, possibly it is, but a borderline case.
The most important though, it's a good thriller. Erland Josephson show us why he
was considered to be one of Sweden's greatest actors in theatre and film.
I didn't know he made films in Italy, so it was nice to see him in this forgotten giallo,
or psychological drama thriller.

Above pic the old US Greymarket DVD edition

The film starts out in almost complete darkness with a married couple in their bed
at night. The woman, Franca (Béatrice Romand) talks in her sleep, obviously has
an erotic dream and cries out the name of her stepfather she had when she was a
young girl. Her husband sits awake and in horror when he hear her moans,
obviously this is a re-occurring thing and he, Antonio (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is
jealous and filled with rage.

The couple has an oriental yellow carpet for sale, and during a weekend day and
with her husband out on some errand, a man with a heavy foreign accent calls
about the carpet. A heavy swedish accent that is, why do we Swedes have to sound
so ridiculous when trying to speak english ?
OK, maybe not our americanized youngsters, but i'm middle-aged and sounds horrible.
I remember an american girlfriend i had once, she stared at me wide-eyed and said ...
"you really have a heavy accent", so i had to make an effort not sounding like the
Muppets Chef ... "flödi, vödi, skvödi a babbly boop".

Oops, sorry, another digression, let's leave the Muppets Chef (he's great by the
way) and return to the film.

The elderly man turns up at her door and she lets him in. Unwisely. He behaves
more and more eccentric and erratic and she starts thinking that he's a creep.
He tell her stories about himself, that he has murdered his wife and been in jail for
many years. He gets more and more aggressive and locks her in. She can't leave
the apartment and now worries about being murdered by the crazy, and where is
her husband ?
Then this film starts twisting. Yes, this sounds very cool but the execution of this
a bit too far-fetched plot was done too heavy-handedly to be a really good film.
But as a B-giallo it was OK and Erland Josephson really showed his acting skills

Film presented in widescreen 1.66:1 ratio with english audio DD 2.0