La matriarca (1968)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

Pasquale Festa Campanile

Writers:

Nicolò Ferrari (writer)
Ottavio Jemma (screenplay)

Release Date:

23 December 1968 (Italy)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A sexy widow discovers her late husband had a secret apartment where he cheated on her. Now she decides...

Plot Keywords:

Widow | Italian Comedy | Erotica | Nudity | Commedia All'italiana

Cast

Catherine Spaak	...	Margherita aka as Mimi
Jean-Louis Trintignant	...	Dr. Carlo De Marchi
Gigi Proietti	...	Sandro Maldini (as Luigi Proietti)
Luigi Pistilli	...	Otto Frank aka as Mr. X
Renzo Montagnani	...	Fabrizio
Fabienne Dali	...	Claudia
Nora Ricci	...	Mimi's Mother
Edda Ferronao	...	Maria
Vittorio Caprioli	...	Il libraio
Gabriele Tinti	...	Man in Car
Venantino Venantini	...	Aurelio
Frank Wolff	...	Dr. Giulio, the dentist
Paolo Stoppa	...	Professor Zauri
Philippe Leroy	...	Tennis Instructor

Also Known As:

The Libertine (USA)
The Matriarch (International: English title)

Runtime:

Sweden:94 min | USA:90 min | West Germany:94 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

West Germany:18 | France:-18 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:X

Company:

Clesi Cinematografica

Trivia:

Italian censorship visa #52632 dated 14 November 1968.

Quotes:

Fabrizio: I can admire you, can't I? Like a father, hmm? A brother? Or an uncle?
Mimi: All right, but no incest, though.

stupid and offensive

Lord, this sucked. There's a particular sort of sexual revolution flick from the 60s that manages to confuse sexual assault with sexual liberation. This film is an example. I lost track of how many times women are slapped, hit, whipped, or spanked in the film. And then there are all the times that women in the film fantasize about being slapped, hit, whipped or spanked (you know they want it, right?). Sometimes it is ostensibly part of safe fetish play-acting. Other times it plainly isn't, but you will wait in vain to see the heroine report to authorities that she has just been raped. Instead we get to hear her being lectured by her rapist about her inability to "let go".

Every scene of this film reeks of misogyny (speaking as a straight, white, married man in his late 30's, not a teenage lesbian women's studies major with a chip on her shoulder, lest you get the wrong idea).

Perhaps the one good thing about this film is that it provides a stark reminder of just how bad things really were for women only a few short decades ago.