Strange Italian film, billed as a "comedy-drama" (that really ought to be a warning bell by now) but with no actual laughs. It's about archaeological looters - grave robbers who find Etruscan tombs, steal the grave goods and sell them to a fence, who sells them on to collectors. The central character is a tall, gangling, troubled English man who has just returned from a prison term and re-establishes contact with his gang of fellow-looters and with an older woman, living in a decaying grand house, who may be the mother of his former (and deceased) lover. He seems to have some unexplained ability to find graves, either just by feeling them or with a dowsing rod.
There are some fantasy sequences - things that can't happen in a realistic narrative (for example, when the people on a train turn out to be the dead souls of the graves that he has robbed who want their votive offerings back).
There's a particular good, sinister moment when the gang board a grand and marvellous paddle steamer ship where the fence is making a slick sales presentation to some museum curators, including the presentation of documents of provenance which we know to be forged.
It felt a bit overlong and sometimes confusing, but it was still good.
Watched at Lansdown Hall - a Stroud Film Club showing.
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