Like Jean-Luc Godard in Two or Three Things I Know About Her, director Charles Matton is fascinated by the huge apartment blocks that have sprung up around Paris, and by the human misery they contain in the midst of American-style “prosperity.” L'Italian des Roses is set in one such housing area, called The City of Roses, where a young man's threat to jump from his 20th story flat crystalizes the mood of apathy, hostility and hopelessness of the block. At the same time, it brings out the most prevalent instinct of all, that of self-preservation. In an offbeat, downbeat but never grim treatment of this now-familiar theme of big-city life, Matton attempts to “freeze time” into a single moment, and he is extraordinarily successful. He creates a universe of mini-worlds, populated by characters whose sole concern is to survive in their own small planets, oblivious to another human being who plans on vacating his.
Charles Matton is a cubist painter and well-known illustrator (working under the name of Gabriel Pasqualini). L'Italian des Roses, his first feature film, made at the age of 40, premiered at international film festivals including Venice and Chicago in 1972.