The latest posts focused on modern visions of women and on mutability. There is an Italian film from 1971 that perfectly reunites these two themes, Noi donne siamo fatte così (That's How We Women Are), directed by Dino Risi.
The film is divided in twelve short episodes, written by different screenplayers, but starring the same actress, Monica Vitti (a favourite inspiration for many Prada/Miu Miu collections...), in the main role.
In each episode Vitti changes costumes, hair colour and style, and takes the role of a new protagonist: in the opening episode she is a cymbal player who every day travels throughout the city with her massive case to play for just a few seconds in an orchestra; then she turns into a Neapolitan mother with 22 children, in an apparently sexually liberated Sicilian wife, a voluptuous motorcycle acrobat, a trade unionist striking for a pay rise and a brave and professional hostess who ends up having a panic crisis during a turbulence.
All the stories are peppered with a bitter (and at times misogynistic...) irony and seem to have a funny or unexpected twist: Eliana, the seriously injured journalist lying in an army hospital in Vietnam, shakes herself out of her comatose state just to swear at a visiting delegation of politicians and army representatives; a guitar playing nun at a religious music festival presents a song that, unfortunately for her, has an embarrassing double meaning, while a beautiful woman who seems to be provokingly staring at the people around her in a restaurant where she is dining with her future husband, actually hides an unsuspectable secret.
The episodic nature of the film obviously means this is a bit of a fragmented movie, but the various stories offer portraits of a multitude of women living in Italy in the '60s, women exploited by lovers and employers, hopelessly romantic yet lonely, extremely brave or excessively naive and fragile or trapped in terrible relationships. Maybe the time has come to rewrite the film and update it a bit, adding more visions of modern women.
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