Antonio is a man born with unusually large incisors; his freakishly huge teeth made him an outcast as a child and as man he has become obsessive and controlling in his relationships with women. Convinced that his girlfriend cheated on him (with her dentist, ça va sans dire), Antonio insults her in a fit of anger and in the fight she breaks off one of his teeth. Antonio now must travel across the country, going from dentist to dentist in search of someone who can make a crown that will suit his extra-large smile.
Acting
Sergio Rubini's physically committed, genuinely unsettling performance.
Direction
Salvatores turns dental anxiety into grotesque visual poetry.
Director
Gabriele Salvatores
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sergio Rubini, who plays Antonio, is also an acclaimed director himself—making his grotesque physical performance even more fascinating as a filmmaker's understanding of image.
Released in 2000, this sits in a weird Italian cinema moment between the decaying glamour of Berlusconi-era image culture and the rise of more grotesque European body horror.
IT
