The Laughing Woman

The story

PR woman Maria is drawn into the home of the disturbed Dr. Sayer, who keeps her there and subjects her to a string of humiliating psychological and sexual games while calmly claiming other women never made it out alive. Dagmar Lassander is Maria, trying to hold her ground inside a relationship built on control, fear, and performance. Opposite her, Philippe Leroy’s Sayer is polished, menacing, and unpredictable, turning his house into a trap. Made in Italy at the end of the 1960s, the film folds romance, menace, and erotic power games into a tense two-hander.