Jean-Louis Trintignant's somewhat inscrutable character confoundingly finds himself at the center of a truly bizarre, increasingly deadly conundrum in 'Death Laid an Egg', an idiosyncratic Italian thriller generously over-egged with obscure Freudian motifs, art house posturing, and bravura camera stylings; but it's the stylish thriller's gleeful lack of conformity that makes Questi's far from poultry film such a divisive proposition. While this quixotic oddity contains the requisite murder, stridently squabbling in-laws, majestically micro-skirted dolly birds, it can only be considered a Giallo in the broadest sense, as maestro Guigli's sublimely skewed aesthetic is far more oblique and cerebral than the ubiquitously bloody black-gloves-of-death approach. Naturally, thriller convention plays a part here, but it cowers impotently betwixt a luxurious layer-upon-layer of deliriously psychedelicized absurdity! 'Death Laid an Egg' aka 'Morte Ha fatto L'uovo' might be a Bunuel-esque satire of middle-class malaise and crass, big business avarice, but in point of fact this fascinating 60s celluloid curiosity is simply far too enigmatic for banal reductionism, and forever remains that most precious of cinematic artefacts, a genuinely brain-scrambling midnight movie deserving of the highest praises indeed!
Review of Plucked
