Pier-Nicola Bruno

Abandoned House is about a group of young people in Italy who exchange stories. The protagonist Maria listens to young men and women who report on sexual abuse and warped pleasure and she seems to feel the need to manipulate their vulnerability and rediscover her own lost love. Pictures of Tuscany and the sensual light within which the young naked figures in the film bathe serve to temper the darker aspects of the film with a tangible lyricism. In the end, the scars of abuse give way to the tenderness of the visual language itself.

An intoxicating chronicle of the romantic liaisons of a group of beautiful young men and women in their Mediterranean idyll. Living in a rundown rural Italian villa, there’s little for them to do but sit around and have sex with each other.