Olivia is a 1983 American psychological thriller film directed by Ulli Lommel and starring Suzanna Love and Robert Walker Jr. It follows a young wife in London who is suffering from homicidal schizophrenia, stemming from having witnessed her prostitute mother's murder. She meets an American engineer and has a brief but heated romance with him, and, several years later in Arizona, he encounters a woman who resembles her but claims not to remember him.
Co-written by Lommel and John Marsh, the screenplay was based on a short film Marsh had directed, which was adapted from a short story by the French writer Guy de Maupassant.
Internationally, Olivia was released under the alternate titles Prozzie and Double Jeopardy. In the United States, the film's distributor, Ambassador Films, released it under the alternate title A Taste of Sin.
Plot
In London, five-year-old Olivia witnesses her prostitute mother's murder by one of her johns, a sadomasochistic American soldier. The soldier disposes of her mother's body by throwing it into the River Thames off the London Bridge.
Fifteen years later, Olivia is unhappily married to her domineering husband, Richard, who refuses to allow her to work. She is haunted by memories of her mother's death, and frequently hears her mother's voice guiding her to make decisions. While Richard is away at work one night, Olivia dresses herself provocatively and begins to walk the street as a prostitute. She is approached by a client, and returns to his home with him. There, she ties him up and recreates the scenario in which her mother was murdered before beating the man to death with a vase.
Meanwhile, Michael Grant, an American engineer from Los Angeles, is visiting London to perform restoration on the London Bridge. He encounters Olivia walking beneath the bridge, and invites her to his hotel for drinks. The two share an emotional connection and have passionate sex. The next day, when Olivia returns home, Richard rapes her. Olivia and Michael continue to carry on a secret affair, but are discovered by Richard on the London Bridge. In a scuffle, Richard is thrown over the railing into the river below, and a terrified Olivia flees.
Four years later, Michael has returned to the United States and is residing in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where the dismantled pieces of the London Bridge have been reassembled to span the Colorado River. An upscale housing development has opened there and the region has begun to attract visitors. The local tourism is overseen by Jenny, a tourism ambassador who bears a striking resemblance to Olivia, but has brunette hair rather than blonde, and speaks with an American accent. Convinced that Jenny is in fact Olivia, Michael aggressively pursues her. When he implies that they have met before, she coyly denies it, but the two begin a passionate affair no less.
Jenny asks Michael to meet her on the bridge one morning, where she finally reveals she is in fact Olivia. The two carry on a blissful romance, but Michael begins to notice Olivia making vague references to her mother being "angry" with her, and hears her talking to herself. One night, before Olivia returns home, Michael is murdered by an unseen assailant in the bathroom, who impales him through the throat with a toothbrush. Olivia returns home and gets into bed with who she believes to be Michael, only to find it is in fact Richard, who survived his fall from the bridge in London and has followed her to the United States. He beats her before implying Michael is dead.
Several days later, a group of children boating in the river find Michael's corpse. Richard, meanwhile, forces himself back into Olivia's life, moving into her home and controlling her. One night in bed, as Richard attempts to initiate sex, Olivia stabs him to death with a butcher knife. She conceals his body in a steamer trunk and dumps it into the Colorado River beneath the bridge. As she watches the trunk sink into the water, Olivia reminisces of her mother reading her fairytales at bedtime, and telling her how one day she will find a prince.
Cast
Production
Development
Lommel and Love devised the idea for Olivia while intending to produce a sequel to The Boogeyman (1980). John P. Marsh, who met Lommel at a party in Santa Monica, California, originally co-wrote a screenplay for a sequel to Boogeyman II. While scouting locations for that project, Lommel, Marsh, and Love traveled through Mexico before passing through Lake Havasu City, Arizona, the location of the 17th-century former London Bridge which was disassembled and relocated from England to Arizona, where it was repurposed into a bridge spanning the Colorado River.