(Contains spoilers) I believe it is an error to assert that «Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil» is almost a remake of «Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August». If it is true that this is one of the «diatribes» that Lina Wertmüller filmed during the best years of her career, the backgrounds are diverse and the elements are different. I have no idea when the lucrative companies that try to repair the ecological damage made by other profitable corporations began to surge, but back in 1986 I do not remember hearing conversations about the subject. By that time those businesses surely must have already existed, but it was more frequent to hear accusations about presidents, prime ministers and «iron ladies» who were stockholders of companies that -for example, in the case of Latin America- extracted riches from the ecosystem using the most savage, harmful and lethal methods (and they're still doing it). Among films that dealt with these issues, I remember the Venezuelan production «Oro diablo» (2000), the American documentary «The Cove» (2009) or the Belgian drama «Altiplano» (2009), and surely you must remember more titles. But in 1986 I do not think anybody made a film about those who profit from ecological disasters caused by their colleagues in commerce capital, and surely not one with the sardonic humor that characterizes Lina Wertmüller. Those who disdain her work after «Pasqualino Settebellezze» (Seven Beauties) should revisit this motion picture if they saw it before, but if they have not discover it yet, this is an attractive movie that could well be the last of her celebrated "diatribes", before turning to less aggressive and more family oriented films (often with Sophia Loren as a grandmother). «Summer Night
» puts –in a way that indeed evokes «Swept Away
», which Guy Ritchie ill-advisedly remade with Madonna- a woman against a man in open battle. Here the duel is between a nouveau-riche parrot, a self-made woman who, according to her own words, started as a messenger and turned into a very, very rich businesswoman; and a Sicilian mafioso who makes a living kidnapping people with enough money to pay millionaire ransoms. Forget the Communist sailor against the indolent bourgeois lady of «Swept Away
», and meet two sharks in confrontation, one as vulgar as the other, one as ravenous as the other, (maybe) made for each other (and «maybe», because the film ends and we do not know what next steps they will take). Fulvia Bolk (Mariangela Melato, excellent as usual) has a profitable company of «pelicans», modern sea machinery that collect waste, whose slogan is «Be rich saving Nature». Sick of how the ruling class has been extorted by bandit Giuseppe Catania, aka Beppe (Michele Placido, playing the lout at his sexiest), she decides to kidnap him, take him to her little Sardinian island and keep him prisoner in her palace, until the man decides to pay his own ransom: one hundred millions that in the last ten years he has extracted from the ruling class, of which La Bolk has designed herself its savior and spokeswoman. To execute the plan she hires the services of Salvatore Cantalamessa, aka Turi (Roberto Herlitzka, who remembers the spies from «National Lampoon» magazine), a retired one-eyed secret agent, who worked for the CIA, Interpol and FBI, in Teheran, Vietnam and Nicaragua, among other many places, and who arrives to the little island with his ineffectual assistant, Miki (Massimo Wertmüller, a kind of less weird Groucho Marx). La Bolk, who risks being sent to jail for 30 years with her indiscreet actions, boycotts Turi's plan every minute, changes orders and take decisions without his advice, as the determination of having sex with her prisoner. This time there are no reversal of roles, as in «Swept Away
», in which the Communist sailor and the bourgeois lady, when marooned in an island, change their parts of oppressed and oppressor, turning the story into a peculiar gender reflection, in the Wertmüller style. Not here: in «Summer Night
» the two characters are almost equals, two rats who, even if they rob for different bands, are typical middle class with extra cash, servicing «haute bourgeoisie», and trying to preserve their small privileges. The sexual attraction is immediate: unlike the messy, mumbling sailor brilliantly created by Giancarlo Giannini, Placido's Beppe Catania is a sensual Mediterranean rogue who advertises his good love-making, and La Bolk does not let opportunity pass, tired of her boring Swiss lover Frederick (a rather seedy cross between Richard Clayderman and Sean Connery, played by John Steiner). She knows better than Turi what is the best method to get her way, and becomes the most expensive prostitute ever to grace the screen. So put aside your prejudice for the cinema of ideas and enjoy this 1986 comedy, made by the most important woman filmmaker that world cinema had by the end of the 20th century, with several excellent films, and a few less effective works that, in spite of their limitations, are by far more nurturing for the mind than other pseudo-reflective productions made by her male colleagues.
