Devil in the Flesh (1986)

Devil in the Flesh is special because it treats desire not as a guilty thrill, but as a force that rewires a whole moral landscape—private longing colliding with public politics, family authority, and the ache of growing up. Marco Bellocchio directs with a restless, intelligent heat, turning glances, silences, and cramped interiors into pressure points, while Maruschka Detmers gives Giulia a startling, unforgettable presence that’s equal parts vulnerability and defiance. The vibe is erotic and tense, but also unmistakably serious: a drama that keeps asking what we owe to others when our bodies and hearts pull elsewhere. It’s absolutely not for everyone—its sexuality is explicit and central—but if you can meet it on those terms, it’s a bracing, provocative romance that lingers like a difficult memory you can’t quite shake.

Marco Bellocchio is clearly aiming for a provocative, psychologically charged romance where desire, politics, and family authority collide, and he stages it with a serious, “this means something” intensity. The problem is that the film leans so hard on explicit sex and taboo dynamics that it can feel less like a character study and more like an exercise in erotic shock, especially when mental health and power imbalances are in the mix. If you’re sensitive to movies that blur the line between exploring obsession and glamorizing it, or you just don’t want frequent graphic nudity and explicit sexual content, this is likely to leave you uncomfortable rather than intrigued. That said, if you’re specifically looking for 1980s European art-house provocation and can tolerate (or are seeking) extreme sexual explicitness in service of messy themes, you may find it compelling even when it’s not exactly tasteful.