Tigers in Lipstick

Lamely functional eight-parter may be one of the most colossal misfires of its era, with the four willing actresses (of whose beauty and talents this should surely have been a celebration)wasted on sketches which are mainly plodding and obvious and in other cases amazingly brief and insubstantial. The visual approach is bland and straightforward - there's no zippiness, certainly no taste for farce or panache. And the most titillating thing in the movie is the seaside postcard-type design of the titles that link the episodes - the thing seems to lack much real sexual appetite. Andress is merely glacier-like in her first episode; this quality seems better deployed in her second, playing a woman in league with a repair shop, causing mass traffic crashes by strutting down the street half-dressed. Vitti is perhaps the most technically accomplished of the four but with the worst material. Kristel's opening episode is one of the better structured of the lot. Antonelli closes with a moderately complex role as a woman who juggles an attempt to sleep with a music conductor and a non-stop business schedule.