Seven beauties
It is a story taking place in Italy, during the Second World War, in Italy, the story of the rise of a small-time grifter, ready for every act of cowardice and abjection to survive through unspeakable events and places.
Pasqualino epitomizes the figure of the anti-hero according to Lina Wertmüller, here at her obscene and cynical worst. Her fetish actor Giancarlo Giannini does wonders, raising vulgarity and despicability to forms of art. But don't be fooled, in this trivial film supported by a powerful formalism, it is horror that is metamorphosed by grotesque and the director's devastating humor, as she deconstructs and violently disintegrates all concepts of virility, by placing them before the mirror of fascism. Lina Wertmüller kills the Italian male, using cinema as the murder weapon.
Pasqualino Settebellezze.
1975Color - 116mn - Original version with French subtitles
Italia.
Drama, War.
Direction: Lina Wertmüller.
Production: Arrigo Colombo.
Screenplay: Lina Wertmüller.
Editing: Franco Fraticelli.
Photography: Tonino Delli Colli.
Music by: Enzo Jannacci.
With: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler, Elena Fiore.
Lynne Ramsay
Set in (Mussolini’s) fascist Italy. The film is a portrait of (Pasqualino) a fool whose macho sense of ‘honour’ is tested in the face of insults to his several unattractive sisters. Pasqualino’s increasingly burlesque posturing transforms into self preservation at any cost, any act of depravity or humiliation - in a tumultuous world at war - his sole heroic act is survival. Lina Wertmüller’s masterpiece is a picaresque - expertly woven, hilarious, absurd and horrifying tapestry of hubris.
