The Key

The Key (La chiave, 1983) is Tinto Brass's erotic drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Venice on the eve of war: aging art critic Nino, two decades into his marriage, is still consumed by his wife Teresa, eighteen years his junior.

A doctor warns him off sex — his blood pressure won't take it. So the couple invents a stranger game. Each starts a diary of their most private cravings, then deliberately leaves the desk key where the other will find it. Teresa drifts toward Lazlo, their daughter's fiancé, and Nino, far from jealous, eggs her on, because nothing inflames him like her hunger for another man. The reading and the watching turn riskier than the affair itself.

Brass adapted the novel by Nobel laureate Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, moving the story from Japan to 1940s Italy. Stefania Sandrelli as Teresa and cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti made this one of the most talked-about films of his career — Italian courts even shut down theaters that screened it. One for viewers drawn to grown-up, provocative arthouse sensuality. Stream The Key (1983) online on iFILM.