A Magnificent Haunting – review

Every renter's been there: you land the perfect flat, at a great price, only to find it haunted by a glamorous acting troupe of Turkish-Italian wraiths permanently trapped in 1943. In Ferzan Ozpetek's film, however, the renter – Pietro (Elio Germano), a single gay man who bakes croissants at night but dreams of being a thespian – finds in the Apollonio company ghosts the companionship (and acting tips) he so sorely needs. Assuming you gloss over his three-year-long stalking and harassment of a one-night stand, Pietro's struggle to reconcile fiction and reality is just about charming enough to hold this frustratingly unresolved and lightly uncomic film together. Why Ozpetek introduces an underground transvestite seamstress cabal, however, I haven't a ghost of a clue.