Let's be realistic.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

As a woman director in the early seventies, in a series of films Lina Wertmuller took on the issues related to gender and sexual revolutions, feminism and entrenched politics and economics. This work is one of them.As is true of this part of her oeuvre, the film works on many levels. The director is never satisfied with merely going after the easy laughs. Any viewer looking for social commentary, both in the main story-telling and the subtext will come away satisfied.This is a very "Italian" and "European" movie, in the sense that it captures the spirit of the times: both of the Italian North/South cultural wars/divide and of a particular European concern with the strength of "left" political and artistic movements and explorations of alternative, non-materialistic life-styles.All of this is shown as experienced by Mimi, a southern Italian everyman, buffeted by fate. In this role, Giancarlo Giannini once again shows his mastery of the acting craft. As is true for all foreign films, my advice is that if you don't know the language of the original, always view the subtitled version, so as not to miss the subtleties of the individual performances.I won't give away any of the plot. Just want to note that (as an architect, not a formally- trained film-maker) I can still appreciate the choices made by the director and cinematographer in telling the story. This is true for a thousand details. In the case of this film, the inspired choice of the camera lens ("fish-eye") for the scene between Giannini and Elena Fiore toward the end of the movie, adds immeasurably to its effectiveness. See for yourself and ROTFL.

If I were to advice one movie by Lina Wetrmuller - one of the finest Italian directors ever - it would be this one. For this and other movies, you miss a lot of it if you're not Italian, both for the language and for the politics. It is also one of the most political, as it gives a rather crude display of how the industrialized north of Italy exploited the manpower of the less developed south. But it's also a moving love and passion story, and an hilarious comedy. Also, the Giannini-Melato duo is at its best. SORT OF A SPOILER AHEAD: I think the message it delivers is rather a pessimistic and disillusioning one: Mimi' tries to keep his political ideals and his (relatively to his background!) advanced view on love and relationships, but is then bound to fall back to his conservative cultural heritage: on the sentimental side, he's still too jealous of his wife to let her live as free as him; on the political side, as he says in the end, "they're all cousins!" - there's no point in fighting the collusion of political, economical and criminal power that we still have in Italy..

this is incredible movie. i dunno why they changed it to 'seduction of Mimi' instead of 'metalworker' because its about this metal worker dude and how his lust, his ideas about his job and taking care of his kid and buying things for his kid, and his communist lover and her idealistic anti capitalism and his real wife back in Sicily and his seduction of a politicos wife to get back at him for cheating with the metalworkers wife... and the mafia always trying to control him,and in the end.. he loses it all! tragic but oh so realistic... god damn! i could see a lot of guys i know as this dude, even tho I'm 30 years later in a different country.

As always, Giannini and Melato are the shining stellas in yet another of the Wertmueller's movies. The two of them alone make this film worth seeing (though this time it's more Giannini since Melato's role is not as demanding as in some later films). However, compared to some other realizations by the same director-two-actors trio, this film does not strike as equally capturing and consistent in its message. Heavily leaning against social issues (remember "Swept Away"?), but bringing to the front the romance/fidelity/honor plot, it apparently fails to round up either of them. Not even the diversion into the familiar Italian-honor humor towards the end of the film is able to pull out the hanging feeling. Those who love the genre will still not regret spending their time with this movie.