The Seduction of Mimi

For four years, Wertmuller cranks out one underappreciated masterpiece per year, all starring Giancarlo Giannini, starting with this one, the most neglected of the four. Like its follow-ups, Mimi is a gut-wrenchingly, heartbreakingly, mind-blowingly funny and touching tragicomedy about love and politics. It's not the best but stands out as the heavily Southern Italian one. Giannini and Melato are magnificent.

Starts off heavy, becomes increasingly humorous - I lost count on how many times a facial expression from Giannini cracked me up. I wish this collaboration of Wertmüller/Giannini/Melato/Fiore could have lasted forever.

The story wasn't very interesting or even told very well and it was all edited rather poorly. There were enough things to keep me entertained though; light comedy, beautiful photography, great use of colors and Mimi is definitely a unique character.

I have no idea why it has these high ratings. It fooled my PSI big time.

However farcical and/or tragic things become, somehow this filmmaker has a knack for presenting things from every possible angle, and here, the fundamental premise seems to be that life is an absurd but necessary struggle that can never be won but nor can it be given up.

Viewed January 22, 2016.

Hilarious satire on sexual hypocrisy, masculine notions of honor, and the alienation of labor.

The most alive movie I've seen

YIKES.

it drags on and on during the revenge plot, but this is a funny way to look at the intersection of social norms, gender, labor, and how one chooses to be on either side of the divergences of related political attitudes. mimi involves in a revolutionary movement by himself as he experiences the struggle -he doesn't need to be taught, but as he doesn't fight against the social norms he was defined within, he ends up on the wrong side of the struggle.

I admire Lina Wertmüller's films more than I actually like them. She blends dark social/political satire with broad comic farce, and I really don't connect with the latter. This film's depiction of the world as populated by fairly shallow idealists who will drop their idealism pretty quickly when pushed by the power structure is something I definitely connect with. The broad, mugging humour isn't.