Beach House (1977)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I watched this as 'Casotto' in the original Italian without the benefit of subtitles. My Italian is very sketchy but the tone and gestures of the players make it less of a hindrance than I expected. Also, it's how we naturally learn a language, by inference, so with more viewings the film is better understood and is worth the extra effort.Even with the grainy picture, the slightly jittery framing and colour washing in and out in some sequences, the film is engaging. I became fascinated with who is next going to come into the casotto and how their lives would intersect. It's a colourful pageant of living textures. People watching on an intimate level. Since it almost all takes place within the walls we almost become the casotto. All the players arrive separately but their lives soon become variously enmeshed and some will change forever.The sing-song intonation of Italian is one of the things that makes the language lyrically charming and easy on the ear plus I prefer films in their original language; to read subtitles rather than hear someone in a sound-booth mangling the original script and soundtrack whilst their character's lips move out-of-sync. Disappointingly Jodie Foster (the up-the-duff granddaughter honey-trap) was dubbed, and with exactly the wrong kind of voice. She appeared to be speaking her lines in Italian and Foster has a gift for languages. I can't imagine her lines were so bad that they had to be dubbed.Filmmaking was different in the 1970's and this kind of Italian cinema may be hard to understand or follow for other audiences. Modern viewers should put aside their unrealistically high-expectations if they want to find this film accessible. If you like to see films that, despite appearances, have been thought out and want to follow the construction, this is a good place to start.

If French director Jaques Tati were born in Italy, had a much smaller budget and was somewhat of a pervert he probably would have directed films like "In the Beachouse", a wildly offbeat comedy with no plot! The entire movie more-or-less takes place in an ocean-side dressing house, a series of reoccurring site-gags and hilarious character studies. A real-time interaction between a large group of unusual people including 2 prostitutes and their reluctant and somewhat bizarre client, an all-girl swim team, a large black dog and a scene stealing white chihuahua, and a couple trying to get their knocked-up under age grand daughter laid so they can pin the blame on some poor schmuck and marry her off. The grand daughter, incidentally, is played by a nubile Jody Foster (!!!) who probably doesn't mention this film much in her résumé! With a mostly Italian cast including Ugo Tognazzi and featuring Catherine Deneuve in a dream sequence.

While many people when they were young might have fantasized about spying on attractive members of the opposite sex as they changed clothes in one of those changing rooms along the beach, actually being stuck in one of these rooms for 90 minutes and having to spy on EVERYONE who comes in is a different thing entirely. The characters in this movie are no more physically appealing than your average beach-goer (one is literally a mutant), and they are even more annoying. The funniest characters are Jodie Foster's grandparents. In one of those wacky Italian scenarios they're trying to foist their already-pregnant granddaughter on some unsuspecting guy who'll then obliged to marry her. Why they'd choose any of the morons in this movie though is beyond me. The worst characters are two idiotic, ugly-looking guys (dubbed with Brooklyn accents) who have unaccountably picked up two reasonably attractive girls (who just want someone to buy them lunch?!), but then one of them gets hit in the head with a canoe (don't ask) and spends the rest of the movie dreaming about sheep, naked women, and Catherine Denueve (in what has to be her most pathetic role). I can think of only three reasons why someone would enjoy this movie: you're a fan of Italian sex comedy (hello? anyone?), you want to leer at a barely pubescent Jodie Foster (have they released John Hinckley from the mental institution yet?), or you want to see some really unattractive people naked. Everyone else should stay out of the casotto.

I guess this counts as a spoiler of sorts...All I really have to say about this movie is that the whole dreadful thing takes place inside a small changing room on an Italian beach. While that may seem a novel concept, the effect is really painful to watch. Every time one of the characters would step outside of the beach house I would find myself desperately clinging to the futile hope that the camera would follow them. It's ironic that this "comedy" (featuring a very young Jodie Foster) did a better job of unintentionally instilling claustrophobia in its audience than Panic Room did intentionally. As far as a plot description goes, who cares? Even if the plots weren't as disjointed, underdeveloped and completely ill-conceived as they were (perhaps something was lost in translation??), the fact that they all took place in this one horribly cramped, confined, positively stifling setting, is enough to justify destroying every copy of this movie ever made, so as not to harm any innocent bystanders.