Lina Wertmüller, the brilliant director who had her masterpiece Swept Away famously ravaged by Madonna,seems to have an approach to her actors like a woman to a great couture dress: if it works great, wear it again. And this she did-just like in Swept Away, we have Giancarlo Giannini and Maria Mellato in the leading roles, playing a country boy coming to Rome to avenge his friend's assassination by the Fascists through murdering Mussolini. Though Fascicsm may be the motif driving the story, the center stage for this juicy treat of a film is a Roman brothel where Giannini's character finds refuge, and gets drawn into the miniature universe of prostitutes and Madames varying from obnoxiously ugly to attractive, but each one loud-mouthed and bursting with passion regarding everything they do or say. Giannini created a masterpiece with his leading role, a man tortured both spiritually and visually, but we still can see the beauty of his piercing blue eyes underneath all that dirt and scars. Melato turned the prostitute stereotype into a whole new direction with the twist in the end where we see that even though she'd never admit it, it's not always about the money, but about the heart. Lina Wermtüller's movies usually revolve around male-female stories put into some sort of an extreme environment(a deserted island, fascist Rome), which makes her stories essentially much smaller in scale, at least when it comes to the core, a cat-and-mouse play between two equally passionate people. Of course, you have all your Italian stereotypes neatly arranged here as if it were on a shelf: curvy,beautiful girls, lots of smoking, cursing and alcohol, a bit of politics and a love story. As they would say: bravissimo.
Review of Love & Anarchy
