The one and the only Marcello Mastroianni reunited with the irrepressible master of Italian cinema Federico Fellini seventeen years after 8 1/2 for a story about—what else?—the arthouse dreamboat being beset by woman of all kinds, as an aging playboy soul-searches in a newly feminist Italy.
Cinema maestro Federico Fellini gleefully satirizes the ivory tower of classical music in this playful late work, where the rehearsal of a Nino Rota piece erupts into a cacophony of sore egos. Brilliantly self-referential, the structure of a TV documentary forms a meta critique of the medium itself.
Starring Burt Lancaster and Marcello Mastroianni, this past Palme d’Or contender is set in post-fascist Naples, where food prices are inflated but women’s bodies come cheap. War is often erotic in Liliana Cavani’s films—and here its economically, politically fraught aftermath plays out sexually too.