Stay as You Are: Incest is only a dictionary definition
Stay as You Are (Così come sei, 1978), directed by Alberto Lattuada, occupies a deliberately uncomfortable place in European cinema. This english subtitled Italian film is not sensational provocation. Rather it’s a psychological and moral inquiry into desire, memory, and responsibility. Central to the film is a brief but pivotal conversation in which incest is described as a taboo created by men rather than by nature. That statement functions as a thematic key, framing the film not as a defense of transgression, but as an examination of how taboos are constructed, rationalized, and enforced.
The narrative follows Giulio Marengo, a middle-aged Italian architect living in Paris, portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni. Giulio engages in a brief but intense sexual relationship with Francesca, a young woman played by Nastassja Kinski. Their encounter initially appears anonymous and transient, driven by mutual attraction rather than emotional intimacy. After Giulio returns to Italy, he becomes fixated on Francesca, compelled to learn more about her identity and history.
As Giulio investigates her background, the film gradually introduces a destabilizing possibility: Francesca may be his daughter from a relationship he had years earlier with her mother. The film never provides definitive biological proof, but the circumstantial evidence is strong enough to create moral certainty, even in the absence of legal or scientific confirmation. This ambiguity is deliberate. Lattuada avoids courtroom logic or melodramatic revelation, instead placing the audience inside Giulio’s psychological paralysis.
Movie about Taboo Attitudes
The conversation about incest as a social taboo occurs against this backdrop of uncertainty. It is not framed as a manifesto but as an intellectual rationalization. It’s an attempt to distance desire from moral consequence. The film presents this idea not as truth to be accepted, but as an argument characters use to cope with an intolerable reality. This distinction is critical to understanding the film’s underlying commentary.
From an anthropological perspective, incest taboos are indeed social constructs, but they are nearly universal ones. Claude Lévi-Strauss famously argued that the incest taboo marks the boundary between nature and culture. Societies forced to create alliances through exogamy rather than internal reproduction. In this view, incest is not “naturally” forbidden in a biological sense. It’s a cultural prohibition against organized kinship, inheritance, and clan cohesion. Lattuada’s film implicitly engages with this idea by presenting a situation where biology, memory, and social role collide without clear resolution.
Nature alone does not define incest. Biology does not assign moral meaning to genetic proximity. What nature does impose are probabilities: increased risks of genetic disorders in close-kin reproduction, patterns of familial bonding, and developmental dynamics. These factors inform social rules, but they do not automatically generate them. The taboo itself is a human invention, reinforced by law, religion, and custom. The film’s characters articulate this distinction, even as the narrative demonstrates how inadequate such reasoning is when confronted with lived consequences.
Characters deal differently with the situation
Giulio’s intellectual detachment is central here. He is a man of culture, accustomed to analyzing rather than action. When confronted with the possibility of incest, he does not respond with immediate horror or rejection. Instead, he retreats into abstraction: definitions, doubts, loopholes. The statement that incest is a male-created taboo reflects his attempt to reframe responsibility as ideology. If the rule is arbitrary, then violation becomes less absolute.
Francesca, by contrast, is portrayed as emotionally opaque rather than philosophically engaged. She does not argue theory. She exists within the consequences of adult decisions made long before she had agency. This imbalance is crucial. The film does not present incest as a mutual philosophical rebellion against society, but as a situation shaped by asymmetry of age, knowledge, and power. Even if the taboo is socially constructed, the harm is not abstract.
Taboo doesn’t Titillate Everyone
The film’s refusal to moralize explicitly has often been misunderstood as endorsement. In reality, its neutrality functions as exposure. By stripping away overt condemnation, Lattuada forces the audience to confront how easily transgression can be normalized through language and rationalization. The argument that incest is “not natural taboo” is presented, but it is not validated by the outcome. Giulio is not liberated by this reasoning; he is destroyed by it.
Importantly, the film also avoids sensationalism in its depiction of sexuality. There is no attempt to eroticize the revelation retroactively. Once the possibility of incest enters the narrative, earlier intimacy is recontextualized as contamination rather than fulfillment. This shift reinforces the idea that taboo operates not only before an act, but after it, reshaping meaning and memory.
Enduring Dilemma Can’t undo Taboo
From a sociological standpoint, incest taboos persist because they regulate more than reproduction. They protect generational boundaries, prevent role confusion, and limit the concentration of power within families. While the prohibition may not originate in nature, it responds to structural needs. Stay as You Are illustrates what happens when those structures collapse under personal obsession and denial.
The film’s unresolved ending underscores this point. There is no redemption, no punishment neatly assigned by law or fate. Giulio is left suspended between knowledge and inaction, unable to undo what has already occurred and incapable of fully acknowledging it. This unresolved state mirrors the discomfort surrounding incest itself. Making it a taboo subject which societies prefer to define rigidly rather than examine openly.
In this sense, Stay as You Are operates less as a story about incest than as a study of how taboos function. The film suggests that while taboos are socially constructed, they are not arbitrary. They emerge from accumulated experience, power dynamics, and the need to limit harm. Declaring a taboo “unnatural” does not dissolve its consequences; it merely exposes the speaker’s desire to escape accountability.
