The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie Review

An ill-fated attempt to imitate THE SHINING

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson September 6, 2016

Viola (Gabriella Wright) and Nicola (Bret Roberts) are an attractive Italian couple recovering from a tragedy that is testing their marriage. Thinking that a change of scene would be good for his grieving wife, Nicola decides to take Viola on a trip deep into a Sicilian forest. The couple lodge in an old cabin that once belonged to Nicola's uncle. Nicola tries his best to make Viola feel comfortable but his spouse continues to be afflicted with mental issues. She continues to have recurring nightmares and one day gets knocked out cold when she bangs her head into a tree. A local ranger (Carl Wharton) tends to the ailing Viola and returns her to the cottage. Nicola senses that Viola may have been having multiple affairs and it is at this point where the film takes a radically sharp turn.

For the first fifty-odd minutes, The Perfect Husband offers a fairly involving story of two people who, although don't see eye-to-eye, are desperately trying to reconnect. Director and co-writer Lucas Pavetto builds suspense during a respite in the couple's road trip. For example, as Viola relieves herself at a stopover, Pavetto uses subjective point-of-view shots of a seemingly anonymous stranger spying and following Nicola's wife through trees and brush. Pavetto invokes the typical breathy stalker sounds for Viola's unseen voyeur. After the couple take refuge, the predator appears to return once Viola is alone sauntering through the woods. Composers Giuseppe Capozzolo and Massimo Filippini ratchet the tension with creepy music and the audience is never quite sure if and when the onlooker will attack Viola. Pavetto borrows a page from Hitchcock's playbook with the filmmaker playing the audience like a piano. Who is stalking Viola? Based on the editing, it is probably not her husband. The two possibilities are the uncle, who has not occupied the cabin for years but may still be alive, and Nicola's stepbrother, Leo. In a previously untold story, Nicola relates that youngster Leo thrashed some lizards and joked that it was nothing like what we could do to their family. Pavetto builds up a portentous mood for the third act but fails to live up to those good intentions.

A fine dinner will soon turn sorrow.

The narrative of The Perfect Husband completely collapses over the last half hour. Nicola attempts to justify his actions based on the medieval methods that husbands practiced on their wives. (Hence the Bruegel-like painting that hangs in the bedroom.) The film was shaping up to be a gripping study of Nicola's family history and a potential return of a least one its members. But Pavetto transforms Nicola into Jack Torrance and it's run amok in the forest. The Perfect Husband aspires to be a cross between The Shining (1980) and Antichrist (2009). However, Pavetto lacks the command of cinematic language and the craftsmanship of either Kubrick or Trier. Pavetto tries to recreate the cabin-in- the-woods nightmare that Dafoe and Gainsbourg's characters experience in Antichrist. But Trier delivered a much greater biblical and mythological exploration underlying the once Edenic forest's ruins. His characters also possessed much more psychological depth than Pavetto gives Nicola and Viola. Pavetto strains his movie's credibility when he adds an incredulous epilogue that asks the audience to accept an opposite scenario. It includes an obligatory montage with a scene of Viola's psychiatrist delivering a monologue to Nicola over his wife's off-kilter behavior. Pavetto additionally cheats the audience with a ridiculous scene of a wounded Viola asking a vagrant woodsman for help. Should the audience actually accept that it was he preying on her all this time? The screenplay had potential for a more gripping finale but it disappoints in the suspenseful mystery that it could have been.

The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Artsploitation presents The Perfect Husband in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this BD-25. Primary colors, especially greens, look good but blacks and browns are frequently problematic. While the source print is clean, there is a lot of pixelation around people in the frame. Whenever black or brown is visible around the contours of figures or appears on a different plane of the composition, noise permeates those sections. (It is as irritable as dot crawl on a DVD.) The second glaring weakness of the transfer is the presence of macro blocking. MPEG-4 video compressional artifacts should not be an issue on any Blu-ray but the algorithms that Artsploitation employs have apparently discarded pixels in certain areas of the image in favor of others. Backgrounds are less defined and I don't think that this was Pavetto's intention. Artsploitation has broken up the film into a mere six chapter stops.

The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound fares much better than the subpar transfer. Dialogue is almost always intelligible and natural (without any apparent dubbing). There are optional English subtitles but I did not find myself needing to switch them on. Pavetto's sound design is extremely effective and the fronts and surrounds demonstrate a nice balance. Sound effects are appropriately amplified during the last thirty minutes. Artsploitation has encoded the 5.1 track at an atypical 512 kbps but this is one of the better lossy tracks for an international indie on Blu-ray.

The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Il Marito Perfecto (produced 2009; released 2011) (40:04, 1080p, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo) - a short film written, edited, and directed by Lucas Pavetto that formed the basis for The Perfect Husband. The premise is essentially the same and Pavetto also incorporated several plot elements into his later feature but there are some appreciable differences. This short demonstrates far greater visual imagination on Pavetto's part than the subsequent film. Easily the best extra on the disc. In the original Italian with embedded English subtitles.

• The Perfect Husband Behind-the-Scenes: Backstage Footage (25:54, 1080p) - a collection of B-roll footage with different scenes featured from the film. Also showcases work of f/x technicians. Chatter is mostly in Italian with some English. Not subtitled.

• Artsploitation Trailers - trailers for Observance, Fever, and Der Bunker. These appear after the disc loads.

The Perfect Husband Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Perfect Husband gets off to a promising start but then wastes its noble intentions over the last thirty minutes. My advice is to watch Pavetto's short film first and then lower your expectations for his longer feature. Artsploitation should have made this disc a BD-50 since the authoring and compression is so poor. It also could have went the extra mile with a lossless track but the 5.1 track does not disappoint. The movie is not recommended but genre fans can catch a glimpse of Pavetto's talent by watching his forty-minute all-Italian film.