Enquête sur la sexualité

In this documentary, Pasolini travels around Italy and interviews random people in public places about their attitudes towards sexuality, marriage, and gender issues. It's fascinating to hear how Italians in the early 1960s felt about these topics, and there are plenty of opinions that seem shocking from a modern perspective. There are people who think that divorce should be illegal (they'd rather have spouses kill each other), parents who find it perfectly normal for 14 year-old boys to lose their virginity with a prostitute, and women who think it's only right that they have less rights and freedoms than men. It's especially interesting to hear the interviewees confess their unabashed disgust towards homosexuals to the secretly gay director.

However, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been more interesting to include some interviews that weren't conducted in public places with groups of people standing around. As it stands, the movie gets a bit repetitive after a while and probably would have been more effective with a shorter running time.

Saw this beautifully preserved/restored print, with subtitles, via YouTube. Pasolini, with his reputation for political and every other form of radicalism, seems inhibited here, even in the discussion segments with Alberto Moravia and Cesare Musatti. The man-and-woman (and children, students)-in-the-street-and-on-the-farm interviews seem dated, probably since the interviews were conducted on the cusp of major changes in marital and family laws, policies, sexual attitudes in Italy and elsewhere. While no groundbreaking documentary, it's still a fascinating document of the time and place. A more daring and cinematically imaginative treatment of similar themes is found in, of course, "I am Curious (Yellow)"(1967) and "I am Curious(Blue)"(1968), directed by Vilgot Sjoman (a former UCLA film student). In those days there were things you could do in Sweden, albeit with censorship problems, that were simply impossible in Italy, period.

Amid some unsurprising considerations from major italian popular figures of the time, Pasolini publicly asks questions related to sex, ethics, sociology and politics to those bold and naive enough to attempt an answer. The value of such an endevour - wether it is hundreds or hundreds of thounsands of interviews - is (admittedly by the author) debatable at best except for some - nowadays obvious - sociological observations.

Fortunately Pasolini closes (and saves) the film with a greatly poetic final 3 minutes section that feels like a wrap up of the "results" of his inquiry:

"Do men care about anything but living life? A couple getting married. They don't know anything about their love. Life is merciless the most when it is happy and innocent. The knowledge of what's good or evil lies ahead of this forgetfulness of those busy living. And those knowing don't talk in front of such a grace unwilling to learn. But this silence is criminal."

IMHO the movie is in this aphorism. While never boring the interviews are not really interesting (let alone sociologically relevant) either. The documentary was released rated for 18yo: a side note that again summarizes the point we can make today out of it.

Pier Paolo Pasolini always has a streak of the documentary filmmaker somewhere in his body of work, where he usually went for expressing his poetic viewpoint on the lower classes (i.e. Mamma Roma) and, later on, the dark fables and tawdry tales of Oedipus Rex and Arabian Nights. If Love Meetings, his only straight documentary feature, isn't completely impressive it may be because in the little moments when he tries for something poetic, oddly enough, like in the numbered transitions, it doesn't really work as well. Those little bits come off as dated 60s stuff. On the contrary though when Pasolini simply takes to the street with a 16mm and a microphone and asks people directly about sex and women's roles and homosexuality and fidelity and freedoms related to all of the above then it gets really interesting. In fact, for a movie relegated to Italian cities and countrysides, with sound-bytes from across the spectrum from college kids to professors (and author Alberto Moravia early on) to farmers in the fields, and done so on the fly and in classic cinema verite style, it doesn't usually feel very old fashioned.

Much of what's discussed and dug up by Pasolini (who reveals himself wonderfully here as a solid journalist, something I would have liked to have seen more of in his career after seeing this) can be relatable for today's youth, if only as a cohesive set of opinions and viewpoints and occasional factoids on standards set between men and women and privacy and liberation and so on. To be sure some of it is stuck in its time and place (practically all of the children asked "Where do babies come from?" say the stork, or something involving God or other). But a lot of it is so absorbing because of the generous flow of ideas- it's a wonderfully edited piece, as sometimes crudely constructed as it is, which is part of the point as a true independent production- and Pasolini's determination to get as much as he can at the heart or whatever at sexual relations and societal norms and what's changed over time in Italy and if there can be any more change in the future. It's probably the most obvious example from the director to screen in a sociology class. 8.5/10

Pasolini's informal interviews with Italians about sexual matters doesn't make for a perfect study or a perfect documentary, but it does provide an interesting window into the time period, and it was pretty unique as well. The people he talks to seem to provide a pretty good sample, including those from many regions in Italy and across various categories - men/women, old/young, city/rural, college educated/blue collar, and conservative/liberal. As most of his interviews are conducted in big groups and what appear to be impromptu meetings I don't think it was all that scientific, and wondered how many things were left unsaid out of social pressure. However, in the end I felt like people hadn't been shy with expressing their opinions, and a picture was painted of a changing country - the deeply conservative aspects gradually facing inevitable progress.

The questions that Pasolini seemed most concerned with were:

Is sex important? Are young girls as free as young boys? Should a woman be a virgin when she gets married? Does marriage solve the "sexual issue"? What do you think of sexual "abnormality"? (by this he means, argh, homosexuality) Should divorce be legalized in Italy? (it wasn't possible in the country until 1970)

It's a little tough to hear some of the answers, e.g. about how women are inferior and shouldn't be allowed to work or even go out to a café alone, how a woman should be killed if she commits adultery instead of divorced (to lots of jokes and smiles!), or how homosexuals are disgusting and should be "cured." It was also a little tough to hear Pasolini push so much for prostitution, asking young women workers why they don't make a lot more money by selling themselves, not thinking to interview a prostitute about the significant dangers of her profession or the emotions involved with selling one's body. Similarly, he doesn't interview someone who is gay, even with their identity concealed. His questions often reflect the patriarchy and conformity, making it a window into Pasolini in addition to the window into Italy, and I say that knowing his orientation.

I don't fault the film too much for these things because it's reflecting the society in 1964, and I'm happy times have changed. If a documentary was made about values today, I'm certain that when viewed over half a century later we, too, would collectively appear backward (hell, we appear pretty backward even today :). It was also a pleasure to hear answers which were real gems, a lot of times from young women, professing a desire for equality between the sexes, an end to the outmoded double standard, and practicality in allowing divorce. In a couple of places a clear link is formed between poverty and some of the archaic attitudes, which I found fantastic. That included one guy explaining that sexual harassment at work is a problem thusly:

Man on street: "Freedom is conquered through work. In Germany, they work from when they're 12 to old age. ... In Palermo, if a woman goes to work, her brother grabs her and says, 'Where are you off to?' 'To work.' 'You can't go. The boss will harass you.' Do you understand?" Pasolini: "And so you agree that if economic conditions changed in Palermo..." Man on street: "When employers learn how to behave with girls! Only then! When employers are polite towards women."

Pasolini then idiotically says "but the boss can't have sex with one hundred workers," which even if he's playing devil's advocate is a flawed argument in several respects and which leads to a response that goes down the rathole, that yes indeed, here in Sicily one or two women a day could be easily done. These are the kinds of things you put up with in Love Meetings.