A man’s face , shading off and undefined is set in a dark and thin atmosphere; it is reflected in an old mirror; the man starts talking to an unknown entity ... it seems that a long, a too long time is passed, memories find it difficult to emerge and it’s so hard to visualize them. Then we are carried into an abandoned place that the carelessness of Men and the terrible power of Nature have destroyed, we are now in a new time dimension, where we meet a prostitute and a man, while being the extravagant and surreal goers in a foolish and disturbing place. A black leather décolleté’ shoe , lost somewhere, connects the man and the woman who, after having met, begin the search of the shoe, into the depths and intricate structures of what was an asylum for alienated / criminals. During the "journey" along endless corridors and large rooms that had previously given “hospitality” to patients affected by severe mental illnesses, the prostitute tells the man she has lost her shoe coming back from her "working day" . It follow fast sequences of another man, an unrecognizable man in black, who is following the couple in the labyrinth, more and more insistently and more and more closely. The continuous presence of the man makes the woman stressed. She is scared and, often, she tries to escape. During the last escape, the woman, bewildered and terrified, grabs the man's hand, pulls him, almost forcing him to follow her in a breathtaking ride, until they stop in an isolated corner of the building. Here, feeling isolated and safe, the two kiss passionately, in the prelude of a sweeping love story. Suddenly, the face of the man who had accompanied the prostitute changes into the features of the strange man in black who had before followed and frightened them. The terrified woman tries to defend herself with what is at the reach of her hands: it is with the long and pointed heel of her shoe that the prostitute stabs one of that fierce beast’s eye. The man’s eye is bleeding; he is battered down and angry; he strangles the woman and, after a while, he turns away, leaving her in the dirt, among heaps of rubbish. We’ll find again the man and the entity that had followed them, in the cell, before the old mirror that we had seen at the beginning of the story,. From their dialogues, we will understand that the two are the same person. (HE and HE OLD). Later another dialogue takes place between the man and the victim; it deals with the love lost, killed: "The fact is that things that are lost cannot be found anymore", acts the last consideration of the man. Everything seems to replicate itself in a temporal ellipse and HE is now conscious that he will have to repeat repeatedly the same sequence of acts and in the meantime, that he will never be able to go back. In the last attempt of the woman, to address the story to a different ending, the audience will be put in the position of considering that mental health and insanity are only separated by a thin membrane that is condemned to tear even in the presence of the most ordinary insult to the normality of everyday’s life.

Laura Monaco, Stefano Scaramuzzino, Stefano Starna

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