The decaying city of Venice is often used as a backdrop for emotional dramas. Who doesn't remember 'Don't Look Now', 'Death in Venice', 'Summertime' and 'Italian for Beginners'?

"The Comfort of Strangers" is thematically most similar to 'Don't Look Now'. A young couple (Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson) go to Venice to mend their ailing relationship and run into an older Italian/Canadian couple (Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren), and slowly the dark story escalates into pure horror.

It doesn't tie a neat and tidy bow like 'Don't Look Now', where everything falls into place at the end, and as I'm not the world's biggest fan of arthouse movies with unresolved plots, I should have run away screaming, but it's a film that gets under your skin and keeps you hooked. Credit goes to both the screenwriter, legendary Harold Pinter, and the director, legendary Paul Schrader (the man who wrote 'Taxi Driver'), legendary cinematographer Dante Spinotti ('Heat', 'The Last of the Mohicans') and legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti, known for the music of 'Twin Peaks'.

A fine film for die-hard cineastes.