The Laughing Woman

Femina Ridens
Femina Ridens
Soundtrack album by Stelvio Cipriani
Released	1969
Genre	Jazz; funk; psychedelia;
Label	CAM

The Laughing Woman
The Laughing Woman
Directed by	Piero Schivazappa
Written by	Piero Schivazappa
Starring	Philippe Leroy ; Dagmar Lassander
Music by	Stelvio Cipriani
Release date	4 December 1969;
Running time	108 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Laughing Woman, also known as Femina ridens (Latin for "laughing woman") is a 1969 Italian thriller film directed by Piero Schivazappa.^[1]^[2]

Plot[]

Doctor Sayer, esteemed director of a philanthropic institute, hides a misogynistic and sexophobic personality that he gives vent to on weekends, engaging in sadistic games in his isolated villa in the company of professionals who are expert in satisfying similar inclinations and staging their death in the manner more imaginative.

Taking advantage of the visit of one of his employees, Mary, he decides to go from fiction to reality, imprisoning the woman and subjecting her to physical and psychological torture, which culminate in the threat of killing her in an atrocious way, as he claims to have already done many times by showing her the photos of the alleged previous victims.

After leading the woman to the point of attempting suicide to escape her torments, Sayer realizes that he is unable to kill her and that he has developed feelings towards her he has never felt before, so he reveals to her that he is not really a killer and being interested in her. Mary declares herself willing to reciprocate and help him develop a healthy relationship with women, but these are not at all her intentions: in reality the woman was never a victim, she set a trap from the beginning for Sayer, letting herself be captured on purpose and now, after forcing him to show his weakness and giving him a short-lived romance, she kills him during intercourse, as the man had always feared.