Immacolata and Concetta: The Other Jealousy

For an Italian movie from 1980, I expected Immacolata and Concetta: The Other Jealousy to be far more sleazy than it was. Instead, the film is fairly underplayed. I’ll be honest, I found myself missing some of the sleaze.

On the outskirts of Naples, two lower class women will eventually cross paths. The first is Immacolata, a married woman trying to make a living and repay her debts by working as a butcher. When this doesn’t provide enough money, Immacolata turns to sex work and recruiting another young woman to do the same. This is what lands Immacolata in jail. Concetta is a lesbian currently having an affair with a married woman. After she fires a gun at her lover’s husband, she too goes to jail. The two women meet in prison and begin an affair. When both are released, their passion for one another causes the affair to continue, despite numerous social pressures. Immacolata eventually proposes that Concetta must move in with her, despite Immacolata still living with her husband.

The focus of the film is on the various social pressures that destroy Immacolata and Concetta’s relationship. Too much gossip, too many actual laws and far too many messy personal dramas. While I appreciate the attempt at this focus, most of the actual problems in Immacolata and Concetta are from those very women. This relationship doesn’t start out on solid ground and neither of these women are making great choices about anything. While this helps with their characterization, it can minimize the theme of external social pressure. Maybe this relationship didn’t work not because of society, but just because these queer women failed to establish a normal, healthy relationship.

While the lack of sleaze and focus on queer topics makes the film ahead of its time, I wish it did even more. I’ve seen some extraordinarily forward-thinking vintage WLW films. I wouldn’t classify Immacolata and Concetta among them. It’s above average for the time, but only slightly. With the queer women as such flawed characters who do violence and can’t stop having affairs, the movie does lean into a pretty common queer narrative from the time. And despite how downplayed much of the film is, the movie still ends on a frustratingly unsurprising note that’s far too fitting with older LGBTQ* films that still have hangover from the Hayes code.

Additionally, I don’t love the look of the film. The colour pallet in Immacolata and Concetta is underplayed like everything else on the film. This is a movie full of muddy brown and grey tones. Vintage Italian movies are something I expect to be some of the most stylish movies in the WLW film canon. Immacolata and Concetta takes more from Italian neorealism than the bright colours and fun accessories of Italian exploitation. This is a totally valid artistic choice but again, personally, I yearn for the sleaze.

If Immacolata and Concetta was a film from the modern era, I wouldn’t give it the time of day. This film’s main positive is its age. It’s still an unusual film for the time in that it’s about lesbians, but not exploitation. And there is some more artistic respect given to the subject matter than was common for the time. But I can’t call this one an unsung classic or hidden gem. It’s a just-okay drama without any visual flair that still ends on a predictable and not forward-thinking note.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

Other WLW films in similar genres