This is a merciless exposure of ways of thinking and behaviors that plagued (and maybe plague still) provincial towns. It starts lightly as a comedy centered on the old "cuckhold" theme, but it makes clear from the first minutes that the "Ladies and Gentlemen" of the original title are a bunch of leering gossipers, held together only by affluence, sexual intrigues and pretensions. Then we are made to witness a dream of love and liberation shattered to pieces by social conventions and a lot of pressure (and this is where a character that started comically grows up to tragic size). The last novella is material for courtroom drama - but there are no heroes here and everybody is just as corrupt as everybody else, the victim excepted, so much that we may feel sick on hearing that "justice has triumphed". The director subtly extracts from us laughter, but a laughter that risks becoming a desperate howl.
Review of The Birds, the Bees and the Italians
