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Review

Two contrasting stories are interwoven in a single narrative in Pasolini's biting satire on society's darker nature and the entrenched powers that be who are compelled to squash it. One tale, set in a barren, mountainous land in medieval times, features Clementi as a wandering soldier who descends into cannibalism, eventually recruiting a cult of followers who feed to the fiery volcano Mt. Etna the heads of their victims. The contrasting story, set in modern times, stars Léaud as the bourgeois son of a former Nazi, now a wealthy industrialist, who is politically and sexually confused -- so confused as to prefer the sexual companionship of his neighboring peasants' pigs to his attractive (and frustrated) fiancée. While not as explicitly outrageous as Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, this brutal allegory of savage "innocents" and their threat to organized society is intense and involving. (Italian with English subtitles)