Screening

This screening includes THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI/MIMÌ METALLURGICO FERITO NELL'ONORE

Still image from The Seduction of Mimi/Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore.

Date and time:: Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 7 pm; $5

Genres:

A rollicking, fun, furious farce where dockworker Mimi becomes embroiled in an increasingly complicated array of personal conflicts, juggling two demanding relationships while plotting to take revenge against the corrupt forces that ruined his life.

5X: Lina Wertmüller

A celebration of the iconoclastic Italian director who was the first woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director.

With an unmistakable style, Lina Wertmüller approached filmmaking with a frenetic energy and opinionated nature. Her films are as provocative as they are genre-defying. Writing the screenplays for all her films and working with a repetitive cadre of actors—most notably Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato—Wertmüller defined herself as a idiosyncratic and prolific talent never afraid to tackle the heady politics of the 1970s. A professed leftist, many of her films depend on anti-fascist sentiment while also bending toward anarchy. Wertmüller was a political filmmaker, but one who refused to be defined by rigid dogma or ideological boundaries. Finding deep inspiration in the feminist movement of her time and the mounting political turbulence of Italy in the '70s, she used satire to expose the fault lines cracking under the weight of modernity’s pressures on outdated social structures. Her masterpiece Seven Beauties saw her become the first woman nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards in 1975; another woman would not be nominated for the same award until Jane Campion in 1993.

5X: Lina Wertmüller is generously supported by the Department of French and Italian's Peter and Julia Conaway Bondanella Fund and the Institute for European Studies.

The Seduction of Mimi is a raucous sex comedy that brought international fame to director Lina Wertmüller. Giancarlo Giannini (Love & Anarchy, Seven Beauties) gives a wonderfully comic performance as the sad sack Mimi, a Sicilian laborer whose refusal to vote for the Mafia’s candidate leads him to lose his job, his wife, and his home. At rock bottom, he revives his spirits by falling in love with the beautiful, radical Fiorella (Mariangela Melato, Swept Away), with whom he starts a new life as a reliable husband and father. But the past comes back to haunt him, piling on comical complexities as all his energies surge into defending his honor, an obsession that has horrendous but hilarious consequences. A blistering satire of Italy in the 1970s, The Seduction of Mimi takes aim at a corrupt government, compromised labor leaders, and the Neanderthal sexual politics of men in power, with uproarious results. [112 min; comedy, drama; Italian with English subtitles]

"Sexual hypocrisies and political dilemmas rarely flow smoothly onto the screen. But Lina Wertmüller excels in conveying both in The Seduction of Mimi." — Nora Sayre, The New York Times

"A disciple of Fellini, Ms. Wertmüller is a supreme satirist." — Jacoba Atlas, Los Angeles Free Press

Any film screened at IU Cinema may contain content that viewers find sensitive or upsetting. Visit our Audience Advisories page to learn more.

5X: Lina Wertmüller is generously supported by the Department of French and Italian's Peter and Julia Conaway Bondanella Fund and the Institute for European Studies.