Agostino (1962)

Set in Venice, the film’s opening scene shows a beautiful woman (Ingrid Thulin) and her young son (Paolo Colombo) on vacation. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that the son and the mother are very close. Later in the film this closeness helps us understand why Agostino, who is used to receiving the undivided attention of his mother, feels betrayed when she decides to go out with one of the local gigolos. She is a rich and beautiful widow – which explains why the local men are quite fond of her, despite the fact that she spends almost all of her time with Agostino around.

The film contains a variety of nuances and subtle hints, compared with unmistakable symbolism. From a blurred childhood vision, the film transforms itself into a quite clear image of the harsher realities of adulthood. The coming of age experience for Agostino allows the viewer to observe his progressive detachment from the fabulous atmosphere of childhood and his confrontation with the real world — observing his moments of anger and confusion in the process of growing up.

That is why Agostino immediately takes on a vaguely morbid tinge. It is not the story of just any boy. It is the story of a boy clearly predisposed to a certain kind of experience.

A radiant Ingrid Thulin escapes from Scandinavian gloom and into sunnier climes in this sensuous, if disturbing, erotic drama set in Venice. As the frivolous mother of a troubled teenage boy, she is a walking Oedipus complex in designer gowns (and a warm-up for more celebrated 'monster mother' roles in Night Games and The Damned). She dominates this film with her usual minimum of effort, no matter that she spends so much of it off-screen - in the arms of a dashing gigolo played by John Saxon.

How does her impressionable young son pass his time while Mummy is absent? Now we come to the secret of WHY this film is so totally obscure. (Even fans of Thulin, or of director Mauro Bolognini, barely seem to know it exists.) Wandering the desolate beaches of the Lido, the son falls in with a vagabond group of pubescent boys, ruled over by a mysterious older man whose attachment to them is…well, let's just say that implications are everything, and Bolognini's dreamily homoerotic photography of underage flesh would never pass scrutiny in our more knowing times.

For anybody who does not find its sexual subtext too off-putting, Agostino is an intelligent and handsomely photographed film. Its black-and-white views of Venice are as breathtaking as the later Technicolor visions of Visconti and Nicolas Roeg. If I can't recommend it wholeheartedly, that's because Bolognini (unlike, say, Louis Malle in the far superior Pretty Baby) does not seem entirely aware of the dilemmas raised by his own film.

At what age does human sexuality begin? At what age is it ethically acceptable for an artist to portray it? Such questions are rife in Agostino. The answers are nowhere to be found.

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