Thursday, 9 June 2005

City of Women (1980)

This was my second viewing of the Federico Fellini surrealist fantasy and I'm no clearer now as to how I can explain it in a few sentences.  I suspect that it is either one of those films where the choice is to go with the flow or to hit the "off" button since it is certainly self-indulgent, patchy and overlong.  However being a sucker for all things felliniesque, I fall into the first category.

There is no real story and the framing device is the old hoary "it was only a dream" ploy, but the film is like one long dream-cum-nightmare as Fellini's alter ego, Marcello Mastroianni, finds himself in one sequence after another with monstrous and murderous women -- feminists one and all.  Man as the hunter has become man as the prey in this brave new world.

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