Romanzo Popolare: Come Home & Meet My Wife

Do young & old get along forever?

Hello fellow connoisseurs, today's entry will take straight into a very romantic film but before we cut to the chase, the S.P.A.M. Alternative team would like to point out how hard it's been finding the most adequate version to review of these Italian cult classics from the 70's. Most of Ornella Muti's earliest films are either out of print, never officially released on any digital format, and to make matters worse, they either lack subtitles or are badly dubbed into English. Language matters, it really does. The true film connoisseur knows that the only way to fully appreciate an actor/actress talent is to watch the film in the original language. 

The internet has long provided us with many hard to find gems, and there are dedicated subtitle websites with a vast archive in almost every language there is. Unfortunately, that rule does not apply to these Italian gems we've been reviewing so far. Sometimes, a subtitle can be as worse as a brutally stinky dubbing. Romanzo Popolare, AKA Come Home & Meet My Wife (what kind of translation is that? the correct title should be Popular Novel) is a 1974 Italian love story directed by Mario Monicelli, and starred by Hugo Tognazzi, Ornella Muti & Michele Placido. Despite being marketed as a sexploitation film, Romanzo Popolare is actually a love story told the way a Latin American soup opera would be told (Italian culture is very close to the Latin American culture in case you didn't know. They have a thing for romance that shows in the TV, music and almost every art form they create)

My god I'm married to a goddess!

It's OK not getting it up at your age.

Romanzo Popolare, tells the story of Giulio Basletti (Hugo Tognazzi) a factory foreman, who's an influential union leader, and an all-around working-class hero (who claims to have bedded 3000 women!) who decides to get married at the age of 51 to his 17-year-old goddaughter. (This may sound perverted, but since she is played by Ornella Muti I'm sure no one would hold it against him). He believes he has progressive modern attitudes about sex, but these attitudes are severely tested when he starts to suspect his young wife is cheating on him with a handsome military officer (Michele Placido). And he becomes downright crazed when he realizes his suspicions may very well be justified.

 
Although Giulio likes to pride himself on his liberal attitudes in sexual matters, as he does in his politics, when he becomes an old-fashioned "cornuto," his reaction is not so tolerant (nor should it be) and he orders the girl out of the house. Inevitably, as she has nowhere to go, she's forced to stay with the cop. Eventually, the two men fight over her. She leaves. Years go by. The cop is married to someone else. Tognazzi wants to rekindle the romance with Muti, now a successful fashion designer...

How many erections can you get daily?

I was drinking a glass of milk, it isn't what you think.

This is a very Italian movie given that the hero is basically a philandering communist and his wife is about half a traditional Italian working-class woman and about half a modern "free love" 70's chick. Unfortunately, the movie moves quite slow, making you easily distracted by your surroundings. This will surely make you miss any serious gravitas the movie may have or any comment it may be making about modern-day amore all'italia and the relation between the sexes. As a sex comedy, on the other hand, it isn't as funny as some, nor does it seem to aim to be particularly titillating (despite a few nice nude scenes by Muti).

 
The stuff of this film is somehow tired and the story never comes to life. And what might have been a very respectable little domestic comedy turns out to be insistently shrill and uninvolving. Mario Monicelli, director of the famed "Big Deal on Madonna Street," has made much better films and this one struck me at times as a pale imitation of some of the elements of Ettore Scola's "Dramma della gelosia," made a few years earlier. 

Here are the opening titles as (again) I found no trailer online: