Teorema

The significance of the changes displayed by the family members are shown in amusing, sometimes brutal detail, but never judged. It’s like a cinematic explosion, where the shards of rubble are just left to smoulder in the middle distance. Take the film as an inscrutable objet d’art which any theory you care to throw at it will probably stick, and you’re left with a film which is as eccentrically entertaining as it is entirely baffling.

Apart from his scandalous Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom, 1975 – another film with spiritually induced levitation -– this shocking 1968 feature, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last film with a contemporary setting, may be his most controversial work, displaying the kind of audacity and excesses that send some audiences into gales of defensive, self-protective laughter.