User reviews

This is a still rather early movie for Ornella Muti, while she was on a good way to become a more serious actress, continuing soon after this little known movie with international box-office hits such as "Flash Gordon" and "Il bisbetico domato". Tony Musante, usually a better choice for a villain, plays Ornella's lover Paolo in a tragic romance which is dominated by the disagreement whether the couple should have children or not. The movie is well handled by veteran director Enrico Maria Salerno, if you take the opening for example when Sena (Ornella) refuses to talk to Paolo who becomes increasingly desperate.

Yet again, this is just another movie about beautiful people who walk all day long on the beach or visit art exhibitions, contemplating the meaning of life, while they never seem to work for a living. Last not least, I want to mention there is a great part for Mario Scaccia as an eccentric doctor whose enthusiasm makes you believe in anything "the doctor ordered".

The source of this movie is a book (same Italian title) by Giorgio Saviane. The young Sena breaks her long-lasting relationship with Paolo, her former university professor, for unknown reasons. After some time, they start to see each other again, and the reason of the rupture soon comes up: a vital contrast that definitely opposes each other (and that I prefer not to mention). Since no solution is possible, the only way is to kill their love, still alive and passionate, like one (as the original title suggest) may kill a patient suffering from an incurable disease. The movie reflects some social issues of the late '70s in Italy and the story is centered on the selfishness and presumption of an intellectual, filled with some post-68 anti-bourgeois culture. The concrete needs of the woman are in contrast with the abstract and controversial ideas of the man, who could perfectly give them up to please the woman he loves so deeply, but he doesn't, and does not even understand the suffering he has already inflicted on her for the same purpose. Enrico Maria Salerno was an excellent actor but I personally love him also as a director, and loved this intense and melancholic movie. I just wonder why on earth the writer of the book chose for the female character the weird name of Ursenna, shortened as Sena.