Overview: Ugo Tognazzi (La grande bouffe) is an innocent playboy holiday rep in Greece who is picked up by two secret agents (Michel Piccoli, Le Mépris and Mario Adorf, The Italian Connection). Suspected of being part of an underground resistance, he is to be transported by the agents to Athens where he will be interrogated by superior officers.

Their journey is the start of a cat-and-mouse game that beautifully plays on Tognazzi’s screen persona with the thrilling tension of Costa-Gavras’ Z. Newly restored in 4K by Studio Canal, Peter Fleischmann’s paranoid thriller is made available on Blu-ray for the first time.

Blu-ray Verdict: Peter Fleischmann’s Weak Spot is an enthralling piece of work, of that there is no doubt. Set during the late days of Greece’s brutal, seven year Regime of the Colonels, it’s both an examination of the arbitrary cruelty and brutality of a fanatical dictatorship, and a gentle, melancholy look at connections between men.

The film’s ability to blend its large and small concerns with such languid grace is striking, as is its comfort with unease and confusion.

The film opens with the suicide of a man targeted by the ubiquitous military secret police, a failure which leaves the members of the government team attempting to arrest him vulnerable before the aging, true believer head of their division, a man of such power that everyone instinctively lowers their voices and eyes around him and obey his wishes without a thought of hesitation.

Shortly after the failed raid, we meet Georgis (Ugo Tognazzi), in bed with his girlfriend. He works in tourism and seems uncomplicated and vaguely louche, doodling breasts at every opportunity and presenting himself as both compliant to the state and contentedly frivolous. Having a midday drink, he’s arrested without explanation and taken to the local security office, eventually accused of conspiring with a stranger who stepped on his foot in the in cafe.

It’s both ludicrous and chilling, with Georgis suspected in part for not hitting the man after being insulted, as if his faulty masculinity is a tell for subversion, and his alleged lack of enthusiasm for the regime is proven by his admission that he has not turned anyone into the secret police.

Frightened and disoriented, Georgis is handed off to a pair of agents who are assigned to drive him to Athens for official interrogation (read: inevitable torture). Crammed together in the front seat of a borrowed car, the men speed toward the ferry that will take them to Athens as the driver, known only as the Manager (Mario Adorf) and his partner the Investigator (Michel Piccoli) squabble like irritable siblings.

When the car breaks down, the trio are stranded, and what had begun as a relatively short drive and ferry ride suddenly turns into extended intimacy of a sort, mostly between the Investigator and Georgis, as the Manager busies himself with errands and sex workers.

And it is here, I think, that the emotional meat of Weak Spot is found. Georgis and the Investigator are awkward and uneasy together, unable to part for obvious reasons, but anything but friends, and with nothing to say to one another.

By default, they cannot share trust; each word one man says must immediately be interrogated and examined by the other, its implications carefully weighed. Georgis is watchful and easy, assembling impressions from the crumbs the Investigator grants him, while the government man is buttoned up so tight he can barely breathe, holding himself carefully apart from the world, even as he increasingly transparently longs for some sort of connection - or is he simply looking to manipulate his captive?

Despite the impossibility of the situation, though, there are glimpses of emotional honesty between the men, even as they’re couched in lies. Watching the pair sit uncomfortably on a beach in their jackets and ties, talking about the girls in the water, then slipping into stilted talk about the Investigator’s unhappy marriage, is strangely wrenching in its tentativeness, as is the Investigator’s passing comment about not having any friends outside of the secret police.

It’s to Fleischmann’s great credit that we are never granted access to the truth, and must, just as the men do, piece together something that matters from the web of lies and half-truths in which the men have ensnared themselves (been ensnared by the circumstances of their lives).

In his conclusion, Fleischmann again zooms out, broadening his lens to chillingly remind us of the context of those lives: of the maniac at the top of the state terror pyramid; of the concrete risks of simply waking up in the morning; of the impossibility of truth in a world built upon fear and violence.

In conclusion, Weak Spot is an intentionally frustrating film, but also an immensely rewarding one, well worth sitting with and considering, in my humble opinion.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
New 4K restoration from the original negative by Studio Canal
Uncompressed mono PCM audio
Audio commentary by critic Travis Woods (2024)
Archival TV interview with Michel Piccoli discussing Weak Spot (1975)
Soundtrack expert Lovely Jon discusses the Ennio Morricone score (2024)
Newly improved English subtitle translation
Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Kat Ellinger
Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

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