User Reviews

The film is indeed a good comedy. It's not Billy Wilder but at least has a basic charm of sensitive and intelligent laughs. The screen-play springs out of the ambitious project of re-definition of the Italian male. At least from the narrative side of it the thing holds. The first image we have from Caruso in the opening scene is the symbol of the crisis of his role as middle class husband; he is completely drunk in a very elegant restaurant in the center of Florence in the opulent socialist Italy of the 80's. There is no mystery about the reasons which have lead him to this state of crisis: he's been left by his wife. The narrative pattern of the film is the reconstruction, told by Caruso self (who by the way is a psychoanalyst), of the reasons and causes of his defeat. In this way we get to understand the fact that between 1968 and 1970 the so called "sentimental education" of Caruso was merely based on the last words of his father (who was an Italian communist) "Caruso, tear her knickers!". That is why he is not able to have a grown up and responsible kind of relationship with "modern" women in general and with his wife in particular. Defeated in his private life he develops a persecution complex (the scene with the barkeeper and the one with the violent child). To regaining his wife (and his peace of mind!) he is forced to reconstruct his identity. In his first attempt dressing women's clothes (in order to seduce his own wife) and in so achieving the role of the unfaithful wife, in his second attempt he almost accepts an homosexual contact with his wife's lover. In the end his wife goes back to him and Caruso regains his happiness, which nevertheless remains obviously unstable. The quality of the film is weakened through too many unnecessary gags which do fit in the genre of comedies directed by a comedian himself but do distract the audience from the narrative focus of the story. Maybe a 3rd person narrator would have given a better perspective offering the audience more distance and in this way these particular gags would no more distract the attention but reinforce and focus it. However 1st person narrative gives to the story more liveness, lightness and it helps to de-dramatize it, with a kind of self-irony which is impossible for 3rd person narrative to achieve in this way. Besides the 1st person narrative mimes a psychoanalysis session where the narrator is the patient and the audience the psychoanalyst.