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Rating: I Knew Her Well is a film by Antonio Pietrangeli "The Bachelor"; "The Magnificent Cuckold"; "The Ghosts of Rome"... who passed away prematurely just before turning 50.
It's a film from 1965, featuring the very young/beautiful/talented Stefania Sandrelli as the protagonist.
The film is considered Pietrangeli's masterpiece and rightly received several accolades.
The cast includes notable names such as Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi... there's also Mario Adorf, Franco Nero, and Mario Girotti, who you might wonder, who is it? It’s Terence Hill! Oh... and Loretta Goggi is there too! ...well, they have small roles; the absolute protagonist is Sandrelli.
Even Nino, Enrico, and Ugo have minor roles, but when they appear (in the wonderful scene at the rich people's party), the film inevitably soars! Tognazzi is, for example, spectacular (Silver Ribbon for Best Supporting Actor) in the tragic role of Bagini, a faded actor.
Adriana is a naive provincial girl living in Rome, hoping to do cinema, commercials, modeling... she isn't quite sure herself... she's an all too easy prey for the numerous and fleeting romances in which she gets entangled every time.
...In reality, she knows nothing, meaning she doesn’t know what she wants; she lives day by day, or rather, minute by minute. Her only interests seem to be dancing, having fun, not thinking about anything. She interacts with everyone except herself...
A splendid and very bitter portrait of a pioneer of the current little-letter girls-dolls-tramps who, 50 years later, still flit between luxury, money, and power... with the difference being that back then they were rather naive and malleable; today, they suck your blood and if it pleases them, they even ruin you.
In the years when a certain liberation of customs was first taking hold in Italy, here was a woman really coming out into the open for the first time, in every sense, that is, showing her body, the miniskirt, the bikini on the beach, the provocative photos. There was a scent and desire for modernity. But since women did not have an adequate cultural background to defend themselves, often they would get burned or, worse, completely burned out.
The film, which lasts 125 minutes, is at times quite entertaining but is also ruthlessly cynical and pushes to the threshold of the grotesque with some rather... psychedelic sequences.
Not to be missed.
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Other reviews
By Spleen
"Adriana seems to fly above all this, also in search of a man who can truly love her, ending up throwing herself into countless affairs."
"The heavy makeup melts in tears, revealing all her fragility and shattering her dreams."
