Review: The Spiral
- VENICE 2026: Paolo Strippoli’s fourth film pits a diabolical Valeria Bruni Tedeschi against supermum Jasmine Trinca in a horrifying family drama
A Mephistophelian Valeria Bruni Tedeschi presents herself to a mother, Jasmine Trinca, who is willing to sell (other people’s) souls to the devil so that her little girl can become an actress, in the horror-tinged family drama The Spiral, in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
Now having reached his fourth film, Paolo Strippoli sharpens his directorial skills, once again embracing a surreal and frightening register, using the Faustian character embodied by Bruni Tedeschi to speak about the unravelling of the family. A figure who might be the devil herself, in a suit and a trench coat, or one of his emissaries, she appears to Anna in a hospital chapel at a dramatic moment. We are in Bari in 1999 (note the symbolism of the number). The Colonnas are a well-to-do family of merchants christening their new villa with a party when the family dog, Zuppa, nearly tears off the leg of their seven-year-old daughter, Alice (Gabriella Telegrafo). The child is hospitalised, in a life-threatening condition, just when she was supposed to shoot an advert for Barilla pasta. Anna has always wanted to be an actress, and dreams of a TV or film career for her daughter. Enter the mysterious blonde, who proposes a trade: the child’s life in exchange for toying with the body weight of the first-born, Tobia, whom dad Walter (Adriano Giannini) would rather turn into a football champion. Anna accepts, the girl is saved, and the boy’s metabolism goes haywire.
Twenty-six years later, Anna bursts into the Rome home of her now-adult daughter (Romana Maggiora Vergana) as a veritable deluge pours down (a self-reference to Strippoli’s 2022 film Flowing), to confess to Alice the entire tragic saga of the family after that first encounter, which had set off a diabolical spiral (hence the title). In 2005 (via flashback), Tobia’s (Alessandro Carbonara) life is wrecked by devastating obesity, by bullies and by his father’s relentless haranguing to make him slim again. The boy suffers cerebral hypoxia and ends up in a coma in hospital. Back comes the woman in the trench coat, with her sardonic lines and a new proposal: “One life demands another life,” which Anna duly accepts.
Divided into four chapters ("Daughter", "Son", "Father" and "Mother") and an epilogue, The Spiral barrels on mercilessly at a relentless pace, closing the circle with a domestic showdown. Saturated colours devised by Cristiano Di Nicola, sound design to wake even the dead by Marc Bastien, music by ROB (aka Robin Coudert), tight editing by Federico Palmerini and visual effects that suggest a budget well spent guide the viewer through a moral freak show that could well prove to be nothing more than the trip of an obsessive parent. Strippoli flips the classic figure of the salvific mother who fights evil to defend the family, in favour of a spectacle of hyper-motherhood and an obsessive, toxic need to control one’s children. It's a syndrome that is becoming ever more entrenched in our time, driven of course by capitalism and the resulting social pressures. A beautiful touch over a key scene is the song by Baustelle, titled "Nessuno": “I don’t believe in the Bible; I wonder why I should consult it, it offends the gods. I don’t pray to the church, the stench it gives off; I don’t believe in heaven or in hell. And I can’t tell good from evil… I don’t believe in the market, it produces dementia… I’m wary of the sage and of the one who knows.”
The Spiral is an Italian-French-Belgian co-production staged by Propaganda Italia together with Rai Cinema, in association with Dinamo Film, and co-produced with Kazak Productions and Tarantula. Le Pacte is handling its international sales.
(Translated from Italian)
Photogallery 07/09/2026: Venice 2026 - L'estranea
18 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.
© 2026 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
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