Italian novelist Alberto Moravia had a very successful run in the movies. Among many others he cowrote Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970) and Godard's Contempt (1963), each based on his novels. The influence of his collection Roman Tales (1954) can be felt in many films. This movie is based on a short story of the same name written in 1949. The subject: a couple in their thirties, Silvio and Leda Pataneo own a spectacular but crumbling villa in Bagheria, a town a few kilometers east of Palermo. They use the villa as their summer home. Silvio claims the villa was owned by his family for centuries. They Iive in the habitable part and make some income from a lemon grove. They have an off-season life in Rome.
Not much happens. The keyword is boredom. Leda attends to housekeeping (with the locals taking advantage of her) and bicycles into town for shopping. Silvio dabbles in writing; he is working (or beginning to work) in a novel eternally in its planning stages. His main worry is: part of his landowner, parasitic family wants to sell the land for construction, which he opposes adamantly. He deals languidly with local leftist politicians fighting for change and with solid burghers with profit in mind. The Mafia lurks in the shadows, one of its objectives to prove it doesn't exist.
Tomas Milian was an American actor, born in Cuba and alumnus of the Actor's Studio. He had a career spanning more than five decades, mostly in Europe but also in the USA. His acting here is first rate; he is cut for the role. Macha Méril's curriculum includes such luminaries as Godard, Buñuel, Pialat and Szabó. She shows here her excellence and her usual whimsical low key screen presence. This is the only feature film by director Dacia Maraini (at the time Moravia's partner). Her work is good, with some echoes of Godard's Contempt and some mischievous directorial touches (such as Leda's striptease off screen and the play with the couple's knees). The initial scene tells without words what the core of the relation of Silvio and Leda is.
The movie has been filmed in Villa Valguarnera, a spectacular baroque spread far from crumbling then or now; the photos of ruined walls and cracked cornices were taken elsewhere. Villa Valguarnera, restored long ago, is one of the main tourist attractions in Sicily. Amusingly, although the entire park has been subject to absolute prohibition of building since 1913, it now hosts an entire illegal neighborhood.
