My Father's Wife

It seems that a whole sub-genre existed in 70's Italian cinema tentatively tackling incest and other sexual aberrations in straightforward melodramatic form (see also "The Dark Side of Love", etc.) This may be due to the influence of "Last Tango", which is referred to directly by one of the characters here. Films taking advantage of Carroll Baker's exploitable name and aging body constitute a parallel Italian sub-genre of the time, and this film marks their merger. As usual, Baker plays a cheating wife (with her own stepson, nonetheless!), though her indiscretion is quite understandable considering her faithless and feckless businessman husband.

Director Bianchi made an entertaining giallo ("Strip Nude For Your Killer") and a minor cult horror item ("Night Hair Child"), but apart from a rather unexpected ending and his usual political incorrectness, he doesn't add much panache to the matter-of-fact tale.

There are a couple of diversions, thank goodness. Femi Benussi, who spent most of the aforementioned giallo in a too-tight bikini and then stark naked, sports a snazzy, straight-haired black wig that makes her more fetching than usual (though she seems to be wearing that same unflattering bikini again). Best of all is another caddish performance by Luigi Pistilli, playing a similar misanthrope to the one he incisively portrayed in another fine giallo, "Gently Before She Dies". He plays a womanizing doctor who doesn't take his Hippocratic oath at face value, and loves to invent sexy games to loosen up his rather staid bourgeois party guests. Too bad the whole picture wasn't about him.

The middle-aged couple Laura and Antonio have a problem, a problem with their sex life: Antonio fails to perform at night and Laura is getting increasingly frustrated. To add insult to frustration Antonio does better when confronted with younger flesh and when his wife finds out she too seeks a younger lover. However, this is more than Antonio's Latin ego can take...

This is a very peculiar kind of film, not the sort of thing you normally find in Anglo-Saxon countries. On the one hand the film is exploitative in the way it depicts the sex, the drama, uses its nude scenes, resolves the tension etc. On the other it takes its subject (sex problems in middle age ) perfectly seriously. The leads come across as believable people: they aren't the "I'm over forty, I should have no sex" bygones of mainstream cinema or the lecherous dirty old men and women of exploitation cinema.

A wealthy man (played by former James Bond villain Adolf Celli) suffers from impotence whenever he tries to make love to his wife (Carroll Baker). Since Viagara hadn't been invented yet, his swinging liberal doctor (Luigi Pistilli) instead recommends a strong dose of infidelity. Before long he is rolling in the hay with a young lovely and needless to say his impotence problem is cured (it's amazing that he doesn't have a heart attack though). His wife is a little bitter, however, and decides to embark on her own affair. And if you're wondering with whom, well, just look at the title.

As comedies go this is not particularly funny (and maybe it wasn't supposed to be given the ending). It certainly delivers as far as sexploitation goes with Carroll Baker and Femi Benussi both doing some very unabashed nude scenes. They really manage to waste one my favorite Italian actresses, Jenny Tamburi, however. She appears only in a ridiculously brief role that doesn't allow her to act (which she does pretty well) or strip off (which she does even better). As other reviewers have said, Luigi Pistilli probably gives the best performance here, playing the libertine doctor who, along with equally promiscuous wife Benussi, eggs on all the infidelities.

Strangely, this is the second Italian sex comedy in a row I've watched that centers around impotence. You would think that subject wouldn't have been much of turn-on to the male audience of that era, but I guess someone found humor in it. I seriously doubt anyone in the male audience suffered from THAT problem with THIS female cast. Still I'm afraid this movie itself is no great shakes.