Teorema ("Theorem") is a 1968 Italian film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
It centers around an upper-middle-class family in Milan: father Paolo (Massimo Girotti), mother Lucia (Silvana Mangano), shy daughter Odetta (Anne Wiazemsky), gay son Pietro (Andrés José Cruz Soublette), and the family maid Emilia (Laura Betti). Into this existence comes, unbidden, a mysterious and nameless young visitor (Terence Stamp). The Visitor, who displays an otherwordly beauty along with a calm and understanding demeanor, seduces each of them in turn, starting with the maid and ending with the father. Then as suddenly as he arrived, he leaves. All the family are thrown into crisis as they struggle to deal with the disappearance of their strange visitor.
Tropes:
- Angst Coma: For the daughter soon after the Visitor leaves. She just cannot live without him, so she goes into a complete catatonic trance. Other characters don't give up totally but cope with his absence in various ways.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The first scene after the credits, in which the various members of the family are returning home, is shot in black-and-white. The film turns back to color in the next scene, with the party where the Visitor first shows up.
- Dull Surprise: For the daughter when the Visitor puts the legs of her father on his shoulders.
- Erotic Film: About as erotic as a film with surprisingly little nudity can be, as all members of the family, male and female, are overcome with the beauty of the Visitor and have sex with him.
- Gainax Ending: The film is of course more than slightly off throughout its course and the ending is quaint too. The last scene has the father take all his clothes off, in a train station no less. Then the very last shot has the father running around the slopes of Mt. Etna, screaming.
- How We Got Here: It doesn't become obvious until the end. But the first scene has a labor leader at the airport being asked questions about a factory being turned over to the workers. The end of the film reveals that the family the Visitor stayed with owns the factory, and the father handed the factory over as he renounces all worldly possessions.
- Mr. Fanservice: The Visitor spends much of the film wearing either little or no clothing, or very tight pants.
- Mrs. Robinson: The mother Lucia starts to pursue a young man later in the film.
- No Name Given: For the Visitor.
- Power Floats: Emilia the maid levitates in the later part of the film by the power given to her by the visitor.
- Put on a Bus: The Visitor leaves in the middle of the film. In the aftermath it turns to the story of the family.
- Really Gets Around:
- The Visitor seduces everyone in the household.
- Later the mother has sex with chance partners.
- The Scream: The father screams intensely in the last scene of the film.
- Shameful Strip: Played with. The father is stripped to be punished and humiliated. Except that he does it to himself in the railway station.
- Significant Name: The messenger who sends word to the family of the Visitor's arrival is called Angelino—"little angel".
- Silence Is Golden: The characters are fairly taciturn and many scenes play without words for the most of their duration.
- Stylistic Suck: That's how the son, Pietro, regards his pictures. He still proceeds with his art.
- Toplessness from the Back: Lucia as she strips naked outside in the scene where she seduces the Visitor.
- Untranslated Title: "Theorem"
