Word: cenci
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last time out, Mia Farrow had Rosemary's Baby. In Secret Ceremony, she is Rosemary's baby, a diminutive monstrosity named Cenci whose wide, cornflower eyes open onto a hostile, deranged mind...
...worth. For now, she is trapped in a glossy, twittering movie that poses as a psychological horror story. Leonora, an over-the-hill prostitute (Elizabeth Taylor), is accosted by Cencion a London bus. The girl invites her home-where Leonora discovers an eerily familiar face in a photograph. Cenci's dead mum was a ringer for the prostitute. And, vice versa, Cenci reminds the prostitute of her daughter, dead lo these seven years. The two settle down symbiotically in Cenci's gloomy, Edwardian mansion. Along comes Cenci's randy stepfather...
Jealously guarding her "daughter," the prostitute begins a battle with Albert for possession of the child. But Cenci is possessed already-by demonic fantasies. Playing the two adults off against each other, she speaks to a nonexistent lover, fakes a rape scene and pretends to be pregnant by stuffing security toys under her dress. In such a warped triangle, nothing can go straight, and after a lot of lallygagging around the mansion and a seaside resort, Director Joseph Losey provides the anemic story with an inappropriately gory ending...