La novizia

There are two kinds of 70's Italian sex comedies. There are the really goofy ones that are kind of like the Three Stooges with full-frontal nudity, and there are the ones that are more serious, more distinctly Italian-flavored, and a little darker. Gloria Guida was mostly in the former, but she did a couple of the latter type too like "Il Solco di Pesca" and this. The problem is that, while the first type of Italian sex comedies are pretty consistently dumb but kind of enjoyable, the second type can be much more disagreeable if lunk-headed Italian machismo and old-fashioned, provincial sexism tends to rub you the wrong way.

A young man comes back to his provincial home town to visit his dying uncle (blacklisted American actor Lionel Stander). His uncle is being attended to by a night nurse and novice nun (Gloria Guida in a nun's habit). She becomes attracted to the young man, and I don't know why since he mostly just hangs around with his two jackass buddies, brings home stripper/prostitutes who nearly kill his uncle/her patient, and carries on an affair with a hot-to-trot married woman (Femi Benussi), sometimes while her husband is right in the same room (then when he's done with her, he passes her on his friends). The male lead is simply not very sympathetic, and it beggars belief that all these beautiful women would suffer this fool (who really has nothing going for him) gladly.

Of course, the piece de resistance is the scene where Gloria Guida finally strips out of her nun's habit, followed by a scene at the end where she runs naked through a country meadow. I can't understate the appeal of the beautiful nude body of the former Miss Teen Italy, but it doesn't really justify the existence of the rest of the movie. There's also a very strange, very surprising twist at the end. It kind of makes me think that the overly macho, provincial Italian males of this era didn't even like themselves very much.

I can't really rave about this movie, but it's one of those obscure movies that if you've somehow found your way to this site to read this review in the first place, you'll probably want to go ahead and watch regardless of my opinion.