The only way the plot of this movie is acceptable is if the viewer thinks that it's all through the deluded eyes of the killer. Women gratefully submit to his murder, usually with peace, sometimes with love. It's absurd. I can see maybe one woman actually being sick and wanting to die, but it just goes from victim to victim with the same unrealistic pattern.
Then the detective on the case acts like a low-key fan boy though he's a man in late middle age who loses sleep over cracking the case, once he meets the strangler he seems fascinated by his narcissistic ramblings and befriends the serial killer while running from the police with the perpetrator!
Unless this is meant to be a black comedy making fun of people who romanticize serial killers (that is a possibility though if so it's VERY dry) the plot is incredibly stupid. It's not a giallo, there's no mystery.
There's a film with Liz Taylor from the mid-1970s called Driver's Seat/Identikit that spoofs giallos with a mentally ill woman dressing up and planning her own murder in Italy but that flick while weird is brilliantly constructed. On the other hand L'etrangleur feels like a pretentious inside joke I'm not in on.
I love the atmosphere though, very beautiful film.
