The Unknown Woman movie review (2008)
I have given the plot a lot of thought. I think I know how and why Irina (Xenia Rappoport) arrives in a northern Italian city with a big roll of cash in her pocket, her bankroll already in place before she begins her mysterious surveillance of an apartment across the road from hers. No, it's not a chronological impossibility, given all that we later discover. I even think I know what crime (there is a choice) that lands her in prison.
I do not know who rigged the brakes on Mrs. Adacher's car, but I doubt it was Irina, because the evidence looks planted. I don't know why Irina was having Gina, the former maid, sign those papers. I don't know much Gina understood of what Irina was telling her. I believe that DNA testing could resolve a crucial identity in the movie, but if it has, what are we to make of a long, significant glance Irina exchanges with a man late in the film? I don't know if the man is who she thinks he is. I also don't know how anyone could survive those stabbings with the biggest pair of scissors I have ever seen.
These may be questions you share with me, or you may be sure of your answers. I suppose the smiles in the last shot convey nothing but simple human joy, and answer nothing. Maybe it doesn't matter, since the film's construction is skillfully devised to prolong suspense as long as possible -- maybe too long.
The movie has to sidestep so many questions that it's as much an exercise in footwork as storytelling. But it uses the devices of melodrama to haul us helplessly along and has a fascinating gallery of characters, beginning with Irina.
She is from the Ukraine. Her 20s were lost in sexual slavery. It is no accident she gets the job with the Adachers, though an accident leads to it. I believe, because I must, that the bald sadist Mold (Michele Placido) had a way to track her and get her cell number. I suspect, but do not know, that he was one of the two Santas who beat and kicked her on Christmas Eve. Doesn't Mold know if he scares her away, he'll never get what he wants? Does Mold know if what she believes about the Adacher family is true?
