La Cina è vicina

This playfully weird, dark satire of, well… everything from over-serious young Marxists, to the Church, to class climbing, to family, to marriage, to abortion to political ambition, to wimpy socialists who don't really believe in anything except 'success' entertained me in a way Bellocchio's much better known and more highly praised 'Fist In His Pocket' never quite did.

As with that earlier film, this is a very dark comedy, where everyone's morals, beliefs and ethics are paper thin and no one is worthy of much admiration. The young Bellocchio had quite a bleak view of human nature, and the shallow, manipulative way we use each other, our sexuality and our emotions. But here, like a Paddy Chayefsky film on acid, we laugh at the darkness at the same time we shudder.

The film did feel too long to me, and some of the points feel a bit beaten to death, but it also made me laugh aloud a couple of times, and smile for a lot of it. A nice combination of perversely challenging film-making, and sense of humor that reminded me of film-makers like Bunuel.