Teorema was my very first Pasolini film. It’s about a kind of spiritual redeemer and bringer of perfect satori (Terrence Stamp) who visits a wealthy Milanese family as a houseguest, and methodically has ecstatic, Christ-like sex with everyone except the family dog — dad, mom, their teenage son and daughter, and the eccentric, obsessive maid.

All are wondrously transformed by Stamp’s divine influence, but they all go nuts when he suddenly leaves.

It’s a curious, emotionally distant film that will grab and hold if you let it. One way of interpreting Teorema is that middle-class people can’t handle the mystical — that they’re probably better off not breaking through to Aldous Huxley‘s “other side” as they’ll find it too upsetting or disorienting. Or something like that.

All to say that I’m definitely down with re-watching Teorema via a forthcoming Criterion Bluray (available on 2.18.20), which reps “a new, restored 4K digital transfer.” The only problem is that Bluray jacket, which is so milky blue and pastel-ish and opaque that it seems to be saying “please don’t buy me…don’t re-watch this film…just ignore it…please.”