The Embalmer

We’ll go out on a limb here and say that this is the best Italian thriller about a sexually obsessive, mafia-connected gay dwarf taxidermist you’ll see all year. It’s a gender-reversed, Gothic melodrama that both affirms and reformulates the genre’s standard tropes of deformed, salacious villain and virginal, tempted innocent—succeeding thanks to star Ernesto Mahieux’s complex portrayal of a man desperately scheming to keep loneliness at bay. Mahieux plays the ugly but charismatic Peppino, who falls headlong for the vacant but beautiful Valerio (male model Valerio Foglia Manzillo, assuredly not cast for his acting chops). Taking the young hunk under his wing, Peppino lavishes money and gifts with a rather obvious ulterior motive. But the entrance of a pouty-lipped looker named Deborah leads to a dangerously unstable love triangle. The film is far from perfect, with an over-telegraphed resolution and a major subplot that seems to exist merely for an extra frisson of grotesquerie. But, creditably, it’s resonant of both the dark sensuality of Mulholland Drive and unhurried naturalism of Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. The Embalmer has plenty of the right stuff. U Film, 10 Church St. S.E., (612) 627-4430, http://www.ufilm.org