Love and Anarchy

Lina Wertmuller's audacious tragicomedy about an assassination attempt on Mussolini bursts with character and subversive cheek. Peasant and would-be assassin Tunin (Giancarlo Giannini) arrives in Rome where he meets with charismatic anarchist prostitute Salomè (Mariangela Melato). As Tunin gets closer to achieving his goal, he falls in love with Salomè's co-worker Tripolina (Lina Polito) and the plan begins to collapse. Wertmuller's screenplay is sparkling and her direction astounding: a carnival of heightened framing, colours and closeups that out-Fellinis Fellini, aptly conveying the sheer liveliness of her bordello setting with its chorus of call girls and imperious, canny madame (Pina Cei). It's a great showcase for its singular cast, especially Giannini, who won the best actor award at Cannes for his efforts. His Tunin is weak-willed, suicidal, righteous, buffoonish - a classic clown of Italian farce, thrown into a grand historical story with bloody, genuinely disturbing implications. Though Wertmuller spends much of her film treating the would-be hitman with a jaundiced sense of irony, this dark tale becomes, in the end, a sincere celebration of resistance in the face of insurmountable odds.