INTO THE LABYRINTH
Directed by: Donato Carrisi
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Toni Servillo, Valentina Bellè
Fifteen years ago, teenager Samantha Andretti was abducted and disappeared without a trace. Now she has been found, having managed to finally escape her captor, albeit with a broken leg and little memory of her ordeal. While Doctor Green tries to help her remember, a debt collector called Bruno Genko tries to find the kidnapper. However Genko is on borrowed time himself…
Into The Labyrinth gives us not one, not two but three separate narratives to deal with, with nary an attempt to fully join them together.
We start with the discovery of Samantha Andretti: the film opens in fact with her abduction at the hands of someone wearing a bunny mask with glowing red eyes. Fifteen years later she has been found with a broken leg and amnesia. Dustin Hoffman plays Doctor Green, an American specialist who is there to help eke out details from her shattered memory in the hope of gaining clues as to the identity of her captor. These scenes are very good - Hoffman is a very affable person, bringing a warm friendliness to his demeanor and getting Samantha to open up to him. Samantha meanwhile is frustrated by her lack of memory and scared by the moments she does remember.
Meanwhile, Bruno Genko manages to inveigle himself into the hunt for the abductor. Fifteen years earlier, Samantha's parents had tried to pay him to investigate her disappearance but there were no clues, it was impossible. Bruno has a heart condition and he is aware he only has a couple of days left, and sees this as an opportunity to make amends before he dies.
The two detectives assigned to the case are not impressed with Bruno's involvement - especially when he starts finding clues when they can't - but he does find a sympathetic ear with Simon Berish, who works in the Missing Persons department. Genko's idea is that people are not born evil, something must have happened in the captor's past to make him that way. So, Genko goes seeking the person's past.
The film intercuts between the two narratives - Dr Green and Samantha on one hand, Genko's investigation on the other. However there is no attempt to marry up the two. Information discovered by Genko is never fed back to Dr Green, nor are any insights from Samantha provided to either Genko of the detectives. It turns out there is a very good reason for that later in the film.
Stylistically this film has a very bold look. Scenes are shot with an artistic aesthetic. The Missing Person's Bureau is a perfect example, a large hall with hundreds of filing cabinets stacked floor to ceiling, each with a missing child's picture on the front. Genko's friend, Linda's apartment is decked out completely in red, giving it an air of decadence.
THE VERDICT
What is surprising with Into The Labyrinth is that it provides us with two engrossing stories which are linked but never melded together, and when one reaches its conclusion we realise the other story isn't what it appeared to be at all, evolving into yet another type of narrative. It's a bold choice and may leave some people confused, not least because the film, possibly conscious of its own lengthy running time, rushes its ending and fails to deliver a satisfactory conclusion. Dustin Hoffman gives a very solid performance and its very interesting to see him involved in an Italian production (albeit all of his dialogue scenes are in English).