The Perfume of the Lady in Black

Silvia Hacherman is a successful manager at a chemical laboratory in Rome. Accompanied by her boyfriend Roberto, she visits Afro-Italian friends and meets Andy, a university professor, but what begins as a routine trip soon unsettles Silvia as she experiences troubling hallucinations that blur with reality.

Silvia recalls her mother Marta in a black dress applying perfume, and a traumatic memory of Marta being raped by a man who later disappeared into the Navy and died at sea. These fragments intrude at intervals, intruding into Silvia’s perception of the present. Silvia’s mother dies when Silvia is young, apparently by jumping off a balcony.

Dreamlike visions intrude on Silvia’s waking life as she notices peculiarities: a vase reappears in her apartment after vanishing from a local antique shop, a bouquet dies suddenly, and a mysterious little girl representing Silvia’s younger self haunts the rooms. These oddities drain Silvia’s grip on ordinary life. The line between memory and reality begins to blur.

Neighbors invite Silvia to a séance where a blind psychic named Orchidea peers into Silvia’s troubled past and sees her father drowning at sea, and Silvia pushing her mother off the balcony. Orchidea also warns that Silvia’s stepfather Nicola, who once attempted to molest her, may pursue her again. Silvia storms out in distress, unsettled by what was revealed.

After the séance, Silvia discovers that Andy, Francesca, and Orchidea are part of a larger, secretive cult. They converge in an abandoned tunnel, wearing blue lab coats and slipping away from the world as if belonging to another reality. The feeling of being watched intensifies as the group’s secrecy deepens.

Francesca is found dead in her bathtub, and cremated remains are left mysteriously in Silvia’s apartment. The double blow deepens Silvia’s fear and suggests a link between the living and the cult’s influence. Silvia’s paranoia and visions continue to escalate.

Silvia’s visions grow more persistent as the younger version of Silvia seems to take control in moments of crisis, nudging her toward violence. Marta’s black dress remains a haunting symbol, and a box containing the neighbor’s dead cat appears as an ominous token. The past and present collide in Silvia’s psyche.

Silvia confronts Nicola at her old house; he corners her and attempts to molest her. In a desperate act of self-defense, Silvia strikes him with a concrete block, leaving him on the floor and dead or severely incapacitated. The night deepens Silvia’s sense of danger and entrapment.

Silvia breaks into Mr. Rossetti’s apartment and slaughters him with a meat cleaver. She then stabs Roberto, and in a macabre tableau, arranges their bodies around a dining table in a mock tea party with Rossetti and Nicola. The violence marks a complete collapse into a ritualistic madness.

Silvia and her younger self pursue each other to the roof, where the girl seizes control and they both fall to the street, leaving the adult Silvia’s lifeless body on the ground. The border between control and surrender has shattered irreversibly.

In the tunnels’ darkness, Silvia’s naked corpse is laid out on a table in a secluded chamber, surrounded by a large group of cultists dressed in blue lab coats. Roberto, Nicola, and Rossetti are among the living participants, and when Roberto cuts her open, the cultists descend on her organs in a ritual feast. The cultists disappear back into the tunnels, leaving only Silvia’s corpse as evidence of the ritual.

The film closes on the chilling note that memory and manipulation have merged, and that an organized, malevolent underground network has used Silvia as its sacrificial center. The final image suggests that psychological horror and ritualistic conspiracy are intertwined beyond Silvia’s individual fate.