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A perfect sampler for the cinema of Lina Wertmüller, one of Italian cinema’s biggest provocateurs. The Seduction of Mimi not only unites the director with her two best stars, Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, but offers an accessible primer on her artistic outlook and prevailing themes. Wertmüller’s camera is obsessed with corpulent flesh and the strife of the working class, often conflating or merging sex and politics into one thing.
All of that is present in the journey of Carmelo, aka Mimi, as he runs afoul of a corrupt government and his machismo gets grounded down. The “seduction” is a multifold experience as he gets seduced by a beautiful anarchist, by revenge, by defending his battered masculine pride. There isn’t just one seduction afforded to Mimi in this regional farce, but a perpetual pull into various scenarios that transform him into a carnally frustrated silent film clown.
Mimi is haunted by, if not outright cursed, by a mobster bloodline throughout his sojourn. He first runs into them in his Sicilian village as he refuses to vote a certain way to spite the mafioso family. They run him out of town and away from his frigid wife. He promptly makes his way to the big city and falls in love with a beautiful Trotskyite (Melato).
All of this is a bit of a picaresque and a chronicle of his various domestic mishaps that flirts with farcical bits and the erupting sexuality really come out. Mimi manages to return home to Sicily to find his chilly wife knocked up and enacts a plan of revenge by impregnating the wife of the man that cuckolded him. The wife, Elena Fiore, is rotund, middle-aged woman whose naked body becomes a nearly surreal object of desire as it fills Wertmüller’s frame. But Fiore plans her part with a kooky, earthy sensuality that upends any fears of body shaming or making her the punchline of a joke.
It all winds up in tragedy with Mimi crushed under the heels of his lower class and doomed to subjugation. Mimi is eternally trying to keep his pride in check while flailing about to tear off the old ways and embrace modernity, but this push and pull is a great source of tension as he cannot quite overcome. We leave him alone and completely flabbergasted that he is doomed to not have his cake and eat it too.
Corrosive power is eternally alluring to those that have it, those that want it, and those that somehow briefly touch it. Mimi begins as an apolitical figure, gains communist ideals, then sacrifices them all for a shot at respectability. But as quickly as it is given so can it be taken away.
Much of this makes The Seduction of Mimi sound like a chore to get through when it is a symphony of moods and tones. There are the romantic comedy interludes of Giannini and Melato, the physical bits of comedy, the hints of danger, and the verbal pyrotechnics. It thrilled me and I wanted to discover more from Wertmüller. I’m thankful that I have.
