La Città Delle Donne
Federico Fellini 1980 Italy
Fellini's City of Women was made during what's often called the director's delirious later period and really delirious is about the best way to describe things here, although bizarre, self-referential and lurid are pretty accurate too. You can sort of guess what you're in for when the film opens on a train entering a tunnel and the first words out of anyone's mouth are 'fantastic arse'...actually, that's not a bad description either. Either way, the main result of this delirium is a hilariously surreal dream-like atmosphere throughout, the film's main star Marcello Mastroianni (looking as confused as the rest of us but having tremendous fun all the same) even begins the film asleep and it's a pretty safe theory to consider the whole narrative as a sort of fevered sex dream of innuendo, bafflement and operatic orgasms, taking in marriage, feminism and two of Fellini's favourite subjects, self-analysis and women. Honestly, it's the kind of film that a lesser duo than Fellini and Mastroianni wouldn't have gotten away with (and really they shouldn't have either) but somehow it works; Mastroianni getting a chance to dance like Fred Astaire and play physical comedy like a lecherous Harold Lloyd and Fellini glorying in a veritable banquet of wacky set-pieces. By the end of the film the clock is pushing two and a half hours and we're only sure of one thing, that this is a messy minor masterpiece that even a comparison like 'Spike Milligan and Marc Chagall drinking and arguing about gender politics and The Wizard Of Oz' doesn't cover.
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