This has to be something of an oddity - a 'Continetal' film about four hookers with NO nudity and No sex. Quite a trick but Pietrangeli pulls it off with the help of a fine cast led by Simone Signoret - by now no stranger to the oldest profession having played hookers in Dedee Of Anvers and La Ronde - as the eponymous Adua and Marcello Mastroianni as the waste-of-space she falls for. All four of the hookers - Caterina (Gina Rovere), Lolita (Sandra Milo) and Marilena (Emmannuelle Riva) are the other three - are excellent and contrive not to LOOK like what they are or rather were for the story begins when the Italian government closed the legal brothels effectively putting them out of work. They pool their money and open a restaurant and make a decent stab at leaving their old lives behind them but problems mount up in the form of red tape requiring a 'patron' to unravel. Such a patron is found and he's more than happy to do the necessary with the proviso that in the fullness of time, say two months, the girls revert to their old trade via turning tricks in the upstairs bedrooms of the restaurant. For various reasons only one of the four is happy with and prepared to do this and so the film has a realistic rather than a conventional happy ending. Signoret towers above the others and even Mastroianni seems lacklustre in comparison but it remains an engrossing film and well worth seeing.
Review of Adua e le compagne
