Shahram Karimi

Three stories. We see, but little is explained. In "The Married Couple," a salesman pays a call on an old customer who is with his wife in the upstairs bedroom of their ill adult son. Another salesman may beat him to the punch, but not before disorienting changes. A maid scrubs the floor. "In the Penal Colony": a man arrives at a penal colony where an officer demonstrates a bizarre apparatus, one that punches a message into the skin of a prisoner strapped beneath it. Who will be punished? In "Fratricide," a man is murdered at night by someone he knows well. A woman grieves.

The history of cinema has already defined the prison film as its own genre with its own elements and particular qualities, in fiction as well as in documentary. The interesting thing about this essay, filmed in the maximum security prison of Spoleto, in Perugia, Italy, is that it uses none of those elements and qualities, and so defines itself more for what it is not, than for what it is.

The history of cinema has already defined the prison film as its own genre with its own elements and particular qualities, in fiction as well as in documentary. The interesting thing about this essay, filmed in the maximum security prison of Spoleto, in Perugia, Italy, is that it uses none of those elements and qualities, and so defines itself more for what it is not, than for what it is.