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.
Review of La voglia matta
