(Some spoilers) This movie was shown in the United States as "Come Home and Meet My Wife." The version I saw at that time was atrociously dubbed in English with characters from the south of Italy given a "you-all" southern drawl. A video from Italy in the original language proved to be somewhat more satisfying.
The movie stars Ugo Tognazzi and Ornella Muti. Tognazzi, aged 51, marries his beautiful 17-year-old goddaughter (Muti) whom he has not seen since her baptism. The story centers around Tognazzi's jealousy when he returns from a trip to find his young wife making out with a young police officer (Michele Placido) whom he had befriended after a violent union dispute. Although he likes to pride himself on his liberal attitudes in sexual matters, as he does in his politics, when he becomes an old-fashioned "cornuto," his reaction is not so tolerant (nor should it be) and he orders the girl out of the house. She goes to stay with the cop. The two men fight over her. She leaves. Years go by. The cop is married to someone else. Tognazzi wants to rekindle the romance with Muti, now a successful fashion designer.
The stuff of this film is somehow tired and the story never comes to life. And what might have been a very respectable little domestic comedy turns out to be insistently shrill and uninvolving. Mario Monicelli, director of the famed "Big Deal on Madonna Street," has made much better films and this one struck me at times as a pale imitation of some of the elements of Ettore Scola's "Dramma della gelosia," made a few years earlier.
The movie stars Ugo Tognazzi and Ornella Muti. Tognazzi, aged 51, marries his beautiful 17-year-old goddaughter (Muti) whom he has not seen since her baptism. The story centers around Tognazzi's jealousy when he returns from a trip to find his young wife making out with a young police officer (Michele Placido) whom he had befriended after a violent union dispute. Although he likes to pride himself on his liberal attitudes in sexual matters, as he does in his politics, when he becomes an old-fashioned "cornuto," his reaction is not so tolerant (nor should it be) and he orders the girl out of the house. She goes to stay with the cop. The two men fight over her. She leaves. Years go by. The cop is married to someone else. Tognazzi wants to rekindle the romance with Muti, now a successful fashion designer.
The stuff of this film is somehow tired and the story never comes to life. And what might have been a very respectable little domestic comedy turns out to be insistently shrill and uninvolving. Mario Monicelli, director of the famed "Big Deal on Madonna Street," has made much better films and this one struck me at times as a pale imitation of some of the elements of Ettore Scola's "Dramma della gelosia," made a few years earlier.