Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil

The director of SWEPT AWAY, SEVEN BEAUTIES, LOVE AND ANARCHY, and SOTTO SOTTO has given us another of her offerings on the battle of the sexes, Italian style. Its full title translates as "Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil". Mariangela Melato plays a tarantula-like Milanese industrialist, while Michele Placido is a brutish Sicilian bandit leader. In an update of the class warfare struggle and a reversal of the kidnapping roles, this super-rich dame abducts the handsome bandit/beast, has him bound in designer Enrico Coveri chains and transported to her plush villa where she provides him with some exquisitely vengeful torture and lovin'. It is a kinky and sometimes funny movie, but one hears the unsubtle voice of Wertmuller repeating itself ad nauseam from film to film and this ultimately has a tiresome effect. The most pleasing Wertmuller films of the past decade have not been sexual/political diatribes like this but the more human and humane charmers CIAO, PROFESSORE (IO, SPERIAMO CHE ME LA CAVO) and SATURDAY, SUNDAY, AND MONDAY with Sophia Loren.