Elle est terrible

Movie is about midlife crisis. This is the story of a man who is getting old and longing for his youth. Soundtrack by Morricone is fantastic.

This film is a very beautiful bittersweet comedy with the great Ugo Tognazzi and a very young and splendid Catherine Spaak. Antonio is a middle-aged industrialist who has succeeded in his professional life but missed out on his private life: divorced, incapable of a lasting love relationship with women and barely recognizing his son when he visits him at boarding school... When meeting a group of young hedonistic and liberated teenagers, he falls irresistibly under the spell of the beautiful and provocative Francesca, her freshness and her innocence. Constantly mocked and ridiculed by the group of young people, he finds himself in a way in front of a mirror which gives him a very pitiful image of himself. The culmination of this "demolition work" being the scene where he is"crowned" Indian chief on the beach... Without speaking about the male topless beauty contest...Subjugated by Francesca, Antonio accepts all humiliations, to the point of becoming truly pathetic. Under the air of a comedy, the result is very melancholic and even bitter. Unable to hold back Francesca, the great industrialist Antonio, rises to be a weak, lost and overwhelmed man. As for this golden youth issue from the economic boom years, she is described as idle, carefree, superficial and even sometimes cruel. The generational gap is abysmal and nothing will come to bridge it. Luciano Salce will have spared no one in this film which absolutely deserves to be discovered and appreciated at its true value.

A middle-aged man has always led an active life and struggles to accept the passing of time. During a trip he meets a group of boys and joins them, eventually falling in love with a sixteen year old.

However, he will be forced to admit that there is an age for everything and that for him that time has now passed.

In this movie we see the drama of a man who must recognize that his time has passed despite not wanting to recognize it. I was a little surprised that no one in the movie has any problems with the fact that a fifty-year-old falls in love with a sixteen-year-old, but obviously those were other times.

Was it crazy? I certainly think it was in this case. The film sets up with this sophisticated guy tony, a succesful businessman with a beautiful girlfriend his own age. Its also established he has no problems with bedding other numerous women. And yet he falls head over heels for a teenage temptress and suffers multiple humiliations on her part. Frankly he is made to look an absolute fool by her and the kids she knocks about this.

You just ache for him to get up and leave but franchesca has him completely under her spell. OK its easy to see why on just a visual level. Cathereine Spaak, 16 years old in real life, is an absolutely mesmerizing beauty. But she has a touch of evil in her character that middle aged tony just cant see or compute. This was highly watchable to the very end.

Someone PLEASE PLEASE tell me where I can obtain a copy of this Ugo Tognazzi vehicle from 1962, which also starred the luscious Catherine Spaak. One of many of early 60s Italian comedies that explored the bittersweet longings of aging adults amongst youth culture, CRAZY DESIRE or THIS MAD URGE boasted Ennio Morricone's first score and some haunting pop songs of the period, plus a lot of good looking Italian youth in beachwear. Most poignant, though, was the aging but dapper Tognazzi in his sports car, clinging wistfully to his younger self. This film is burned in memory now for 30 years as I, myself, approach that turning point. See it with someone you're growing older with.