1968, UK
In Joseph Losey’s underrated Secret Ceremony, an ageing but still glamorous Elizabeth Taylor stars as Leonora, a prostitute grieving over the death of her daughter in a drowning accident.
Travelling to the graveyard for a visit one day, she is accosted on a city bus by a waifish weirdo named Cenci (Mia Farrow), who insists that Leonora is her ‘missing’ mother.
Cenci’s pleading eyes remind Leonora of her dead daughter, and she concedes to follow the girl to her giant London house, where she immediately spies a picture of the mother in question and understands the confusion – the two women are nearly identical.
But in all the family photos, the image of the father is suspiciously blackened out.
Leonora sizes up the situation: a young girl alone in a big house who wants her dead mommy back, and a childless mother living in poverty who could get quite used to being doted on by a young daughter-figure and living a life of opulence.
Within minutes the two are playing out a scenario of domestic damage, wherein Cenci recounts the events that led up to her father’s absence: he was caught doing something ‘scandalous’ to Cenci in the kitchen – something that left her permanently deranged.
Leonora has to decide whether or not to use the girl’s neurosis to her own advantage, knowing that to get sucked into Cenci’s perverse game could mean risking her own sanity as well.
hexafu 