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I've seen the fabulously acted Italian thriller "The Double Hour" twice now, and for all its intricate manipulations, it stays with me for a very simple reason: The love story at its bittersweet heart is played for keeps.

Fans of "Shutter Island" make the same argument regarding that picture, and the romantic ache at its core. Someday I'll give that one's bombast and grandiosity a second look. "The Double Hour," the title of which refers to make-a-wish times of day or night such as 12:12, boasts no real thematic or cinematic ambitions beyond a fiendishly slippery mind game with recognizably human characters. Good enough for me! If Giuseppe Capotondi's film, being released by Samuel Goldwyn Films in the U.S., had any sort of marketing budget, it could've been this year's "Tell No One," the French guessing game that put Chicago's Music Box Films on the map.

It stars the marvelous Russian actress Ksenia Rappoport, who won the best actress prize at the Venice festival for "The Double Hour." Hers is one of the most expressive and soulful faces the movies have given us in a while. She plays Sonia, a Slovenian national who works as a hotel chambermaid in Turin, Italy. In the first scene, a hotel guest's bizarre suicide shakes up Sonia, who already has the air of someone processing a load of grief, or an unresolved past.

After this unsettling prologue, Sonia meets a kindred spirit at a speed-dating gathering: security guard Guido, played by Filippo Timi, who was so riveting as young Mussolini in "Vincere." Guido's job involves guarding a remote mansion via a sophisticated array of electronic surveillance equipment. A robbery interrupts a would-be tryst between Guido and Sonia. The altercation leads to tragedy. Sonia, numb, returns to her old routines at the hotel. Then things get supernatural: A phone call, late at night, appears to be coming from beyond the grave. The same menacing Catholic priest starts popping up all over Turin, as if the Vatican had suddenly fired everyone in Italy but one man. What gives?

Director Capotondi complicates the story's shivers and our sympathies without becoming relentless or cheap about it. The early scene at the speed-dating seminar establishes a wonderful connection between the key characters and their soulful interpreters. Rappoport, a member of the Maly Theatre, has done a wealth of Chekhov, which turns out to be ideal training for this weird and effective blend of Japanese horror tropes (messages from the dead, sudden, scary sound cues when the vulnerable heroine's in the tub) and ruminative, noirish pulp, buoyed by a genuine love story. You may not like the resolution. The script by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo, fish-wraps one too many red herrings. But its central twist works. And if "The Double Hour" were only about that twist, I wouldn't have had any reason to see it twice.

mjphillips@tribune.com

No MPAA rating (some violence, nudity, sexuality and language)

Cast: Ksenia Rappoport (Sonia); Filippo Timi (Guido); Antonia Truppo (Margherita); Gaetano Bruno (Riccardo); Fausto Russo Alesi (Bruno); Michele Di Mauro (Dante)

Credits: Directed by Giuseppe Capotondi; written by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo; produced by Nicola Giuliano and Francesca Cima. A Samuel Goldwyn Films release. Running time: 1:36. In Italian with English subtitles.