Beyond Evil

Cavani's biopic tracing the relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche (Josephson), minor writer Paul Rée (Powell), and Lou Salomé (Sanda), successful novelist and later student of Freud. Its celebration of a 'pure' and passionate friendship committed to Nietzsche's ideas (of a life transcending ethics) is given a handsomed Cinecittà period production. But Cavani's curious dramatic conceit that the writings of the Superman himself can be injected into flesh-and-blood historical characters - as dialogue, as models for outrageous social behaviour - finally ends up as ambiguous, sensationalistic and overblown as its true precursor, Ken Russell's Women in Love, a film to which Beyond Evil, to put it politely, more than pays homage.