User reviews

This is a hell of a film about love and hate and leftist politics or for that matter, any kind of 'progressivist' attitude in a world that stubbornly refuses to abandon old destructive ways. I don't think it's in any way inferior to "Seven Beauties" and "Swept Away," just a bit more intellectual and complicated. Of course, the always ridiculous sounding English dubbing of the mostly Italian actors takes too much away from a film like this; I mean this isn't a spaghetti western here. It would've been much better to keep only Bergen and Giannini in English and subtitle the rest of the characters and let them speak their natural Italian. I mean, did they really think mass numbers of Americans were going to see an intellectual film like this? The art-house audience prefers subtitled foreign films anyway. Giannini is his usual excellent self, playing a communist journalist who falls in love with an American (Candice Bergen) and chases her from Italy to San Francisco. Bergen also goes all out for this role in her trademark wonderful understated way that never gets carried away with itself. There are many funny scenes and some that would've probably never been shot in the 'politically correct' film climate of today (the scene where Giannini shows his little girl his penis for example and she tells him another boy's is bigger!). The legendary Giussepe Rottuno did the magnificent cinematography and the music is also brilliant throughout.

A review of a young couple's life, in flashbacks, from the beginning in Italy to San Francisco and back, in love, in denial, in the struggle to come to terms with life itself.

Lina Wertmueller's direction dives right to the heart of the angst of love, its feeling of closeness and its opposite feeling of being unable to fully connect, an impossible dream of emotional need clashing with the physical isolation of each.

Candice Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini are particularly magnificent in the violent, extended fight on the night full of endless rain.

Their friends, often seen as groups of faces, provide a Greek chorus of comment, detached and occasionally mocking.

This is yet another terrific reason to keep the VHS player working!