Against the rubble gray and stiff mahogany with which director May el-Toukhy washes out her post-Second World War Copenhagen, the pops of crimson in “Woman Unknown” announce a stark symbolism that’s about as subtle as the red swastika eventually smeared on the front door of protagonist Marie (Mathilde Arcel). As obvious as these subliminal scarlet letters may be, they’re not without a certain Hitchcockian power in a film about sexual shame and a kind of violence against women’s bodies that operates from the inside out. But as this is el-Toukhy — whose steely 2019 incest drama “Queen of Hearts” was promptly adapted by French provocatrice Catherine Breillat in “Last Summer” — the film’s feminism, or lack thereof depending on how you take your empowerment, is a prickly matter by design.
As with the women played by Emmanuelle Riva in “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” or Charlotte Rampling in “The Night Porter,” a crisis is sparked over Marie’s supposedly soiled sheets, with el-Toukhy basing her story on the many accounts of public punishment received by women from Nazi-occupied countries who had sexual relations with German soldiers during the war. It’s a spicy conceit from the only woman director in Venice’s main competition, and its implications arguably creep out beyond the historical context in question — should our private lives be judged and exposed to real consequences? Not that el-Toukhy has made a particularly open film with this neatly scripted psychodrama, her austere visuals and prim haut-bourgeois setting practically asking to be unraveled.
