Devil in the Flesh (1986) poster
1986 · drama · romance

Devil in the Flesh

Directed by Marco Bellocchio1h 54m1986
ElsewhereIMDb5.72kTMDB5.679
  • sombre
  • intense
Movie DNA

Sombre, steady, measured drama / romance, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

Our read · Devil in the Flesh (1986) reads as a sombre, steady, grounded drama · romance entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Devil in the Flesh

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want an intense Italian erotic drama about a high school student's obsessive affair.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 15attention 3/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upexplicit sexnudity

Skip it tonightYou dislike explicit unsimulated sex scenes or taboo relationship stories.

If Devil in the Flesh is your film
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
raw explicit sexual obsession and power dynamics
(if you want younger protagonists)
Malizia (1973)
Italian coming of age with erotic awakening and family tension
(if you need more psychological depth)
The Key (1983)
Tinto Brass erotic drama of desire and jealousy
(if you prefer period over modern setting)
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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