The Twisted “Secret Ceremony” Film For Mother’s Day

Substitute Daughter and Mother

Here’s a perfect twisted movie for Mother’s Day- Secret Ceremony, based on a prize-winning short story by Argentine civil servant Marco Denevi, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow as Leonara and Cenci who have come together in a lesbian charged substitute mother/daughter relationship.

NY Times review describes it as “…..confidence men—drawn into the frank needs of the insane, until their confidence roles become a personal truth about them.”

Plot

An aging prostitute, Leonora, played by Elizabeth Taylor, spots Cenci, played by a Mia Farrow staring at her on the bus. Cenci reminds Leonora of her daughter who died at a young age, and as we find out later, Leonara is the spitting image of Cenci’s mother.

Cenci is intrigued so she follows Leonora around as she visits her child’s grave. Somehow she invites Leonora to the fabulous mansion where she lives to act as her mother. Liz is playing a prostitute so we don’t really know if Ceci offered her cash and she was going to go lesbo or not.

Cenci fixes Leonora breakfast and one of the highlights of the film is hearing Liz Taylor burp during the sumptuous meal- real class.

Cenci acts as though the hooker she just took in is her mother and Liz Taylor’s character, Leonora assumes the role and moves in and wears the real mother’s clothes, designed by Christian Dior which are all fabulous! She even passes herself off to Cenci’s aunts as the dead woman’s sister.

Stunning purple fez by Christian Dior

The two of them have some real lesbo moments: Leonora imitates an orgasm for Cenci, they take a bath together and Cenci massages Leonora’s back in bed.

Who needs their back washed?

Will Liz get a happy ending?

After a conversation with Cenci’s step-father, who was banished from the house by his dead ex-wife, Leonora figures out that Cenci is a sexual psychotic who tried to seduce her stepfather.

Cenci goes more mad as the film goes by and you kind of wonder, did she kill her own mother and is that what’s going to happen to Liz Taylor’s character?

They eventually end up fighting a lot and Mia Farrow, who had just filmed Rosemary’s Baby where she gets pregnant by Satan is now, in this film, faking a pregnancy by stuffing a doll up her dress. When Leonora calls her out on the fake pregnancy, Cenci freaks and tosses her out.

Eventually, Leonora returns and begs forgiveness but Cenci is already planning to kill herself so she throws her out.

Spoiler after the movie poster

At Cenci’s funeral, the step-father shows up and Leonora stabs him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2011 at 12:53 am and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.