Luciano Martino
La vergine, il toro e il capricorno

Do you think that if I had to choose a film to showcase an actor's talent, I would pick an art film? "I've never met an intelligent actor" (Andrej Tarkovsky). I would choose this "zodiacal" film, with that phenomenon that is Alberto Lionello, where a histrionic and chameleonic verve merges with reality, and the boundaries between it and acting are erased, if only by that line in the film where at his family dinner, after a heated argument between Fenech and the mother-in-law with a "lively" past, the latter feigns illness, the waiter asks the father-in-law if he should bring the salts, and the prompt reply is: "Come on, can't you see it's the usual pretence!"

Yes, the film is all a pretence, but what a pretence. The "bad comedy" doesn’t fall apart anywhere, the leitmotif of the "horns" nightmare is supported by constant and absurd inventions, ranging from truck drivers to the "big cat," to horned hunting trophies. It's an apotheosis of chases for the sought-after misunderstanding, where the consumption of temptation stops at the attempt to justify the lack of fulfillment.

Clearly, the artistic rendering of the product is nauseating, but this is precisely the magnet that endorses a foolish evaluation filled with a reference to September that will never fail anything or anyone. The incredibility of the nonsense is pushed to the unbelievable, culminating in the absoluteness of my irremovable conviction that it’s the quintessential Italian "bad comedy."

Fenech fetish as a demonstration of the event, as shrewd as needed to keep in check the itch in the pants of the husband with desires of external pollinations with appropriate island escapes where robust young men are ready to lend themselves to definitive performances with Edwige. The fact remains that the inconclusiveness and futility of this whole rigmarole chasing after phantom penetrations only strengthen the wasted effort of the missed encounter.

And here, with Califano’s permission, there’s no boredom but there is the Joy that punctuates everyone's desire: "Joy, don’t you think you're overdoing it a bit? Go to hell!"

Yes, go to hell, all of you, if you're still taking me seriously...