Venez donc prendre le café chez nous

An Italian sex comedy directed by Alberto Lattuada, who is most famous for co-directing Federico Fellini's first feature film, Variety Lights. Lattuada was quite a popular director at the time - Variety Lights was a rare box office and critical failure for him, to put it in perspective - and, as much as I like that film, it's a shame that that's basically all he's known for. A while back I discovered his 1962 film Mafioso (which has been released on DVD by Criterion), and I absolutely loved it. Italian DVD company Raro has begun to release discs in Region 1, among them a few Lattuada titles, and I decided to check one of them out. Come Have Coffee with Us concerns an accountant (Ugo Tognazzi) who comes into the lives of three spinster sisters (Angela Goodwin, Francesca Romana Coluzzi and Milena Vukotic) whose father has just died. He promises to help them with their tax problem, but instead begins his ritual of seduction. Goodwin, the eldest, is the first to fall, and ends up marrying him. The other two are madly jealous, but they have no need to be. Soon after the wedding, he turns his libido towards them. It's an amusing film. I'd say it's perhaps a tad too slow, although Raro's supplements (which include an interview with an Italian film historian and a Criterion-style booklet) helped me understand the film a little better.

Great director Alberto Lattuada. Francesca Romana Coluzzi does a great role. Angela Goodwin (Bucci), in her first role, is very good. Ugo Tognazzi, the giant actor from "The Monsters", "La Grande Bouffe", "My Friends", "La Cage aux Folles", is only effective here. The best actress, stealing the whole film, is the talented Milena Vukotic, Bunuel's favorite and "Fantozzi's wife".

A sardonically funny look at a Lothario's nightly tiptoe through the tulips. Ugo Tognazzi, who is best known in the US for La Cage aux Folles, is a middle-aged man who decides to settle down and marries an unusual heiress. His virile prowess eventually extends to her two sisters but, when the maid catches his eye... Each sister plays an instrument, suffice it to say, the trio are collectively bewitching though not conventionally attractive. This film is curiously similar to 1987's The Witches of Eastwick. Perhaps because of the obvious story dissimilarity, the female leads in Eastwick being witches, no one has mentioned it.

The sex just adds tension to the film, but it gives a good insight into greedy peasant like attitude to morals (non really), and other universal values. It's about getting sex, money and lazy comfortable life, with least amount of effort.

A symbolic scene is while checking the property of rich heiress, he (Ugos character) even climbs on its wall to count the number of hens, cocks and chickens in their pen...so I can be sure, not only that he will be well fed, but the woman is indeed wealthy! How can you go wrong...if she has 30 hens in the pen ! Very peasant attitude to wealth!

Even Ugo Tognazzi, commented he liked the depiction of provincial, 'petite bourgeoise', quite vulgar, and greedy Italy in this film ! Of course, all this is done in a dark comedy ....with an odd happy ending twist. The three spinster sisters become the loose women of the town, while 'Ugo's character is reduced to be immobile in a wheelchair , after getting a seizure for having too much extra-marital sex !