Senza pelle (1994)

Gina, a post office clerk, leads an apparently peaceful life with her partner Riccardo, a bus driver with whom she has lived for four years and has a little boy named Enrico. The two cannot get married because Riccardo is constantly thwarted by his ex-wife Paola, who refuses to grant him a divorce. One morning, Gina finds a romantic note addressed to her in her mailbox and signed by a certain Saverio; from then on, the letters arrive daily. Their contents reveal Saverio’s romantic interest, though Gina has never seen him. At first frightened, she tells her friend Rossana and her mother, who advises her to keep the matter secret from Riccardo. One day, while Riccardo is home alone, a deliveryman brings him an enormous bouquet of red roses addressed to Gina, and he discovers the notes his partner has hidden in a drawer. At first he flies into a rage, believing Gina has a lover, but then she tells him what happened, and the couple try every means to discover Saverio’s identity. When the mysterious admirer leaves his phone number on a note, Riccardo traces the address where he lives and bursts into the house, beating his rival. Taken to the police station after Saverio’s mother threatens him with a gun she keeps in the house, Riccardo discovers the truth: Saverio is a young man with psychological problems, taking medication for mental disorders following his father’s death. His father was a distinguished cardiologist. The young man lives with his mother and spends his days smoking and masturbating over lingerie catalogues. Saverio’s psychiatrist describes him as harmless, very intelligent and sensitive, so much so that he cannot maintain boundaries with the world around him, almost as if he had no skin. Without her husband’s knowledge, Gina begins spending time with Saverio, going on walks and chatting with him, and discovers a sensitive, delicate young man. She manages to get him a small job at a nursery run by Mr. Urbano and continues to accept the poems he dedicates to her. Meanwhile, Saverio stops taking his medication, filling the bottles with tap water, and his obsession with Gina continues to grow: one afternoon, he asks her for a kiss in the greenhouse, and she gives him one, only to feel guilty and run away from him. Gina and Riccardo can find no other solution but to leave Rome and move elsewhere so Saverio can no longer track them down. The distress caused by the woman’s sudden abandonment sends Saverio into a psychotic episode, during which he completely destroys the nursery, stark naked. Stopped by the Carabinieri, he is admitted to a psychiatric community, where caring for the vegetable garden seems to help him regain a sense of balance.