A Special Day

Anytime I see the names Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni together in a movie I always get high hopes. Who could forget their spicy and sexy comedies Marriage Italian Style or Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow? Or their sublime but difficult and depressing Sunflower? A Special Day is humane, sensitive and presents a similar political scheme with the novel Mrs. Dalloway: that one day, that one brief encounter can profoundly change your life and open your world. They also share the common thread of a housewife going about her normal business before tiny tremors in her life present the facts and details that have always been in front of her in sharp detail. She always saw them, but they were blurred and located in the edges of her vision. Mastroianni's character never truly evolves or changes, but without his tortured, suicidal performance Loren's character and performance would be incomplete. It's a two-hander that shows two great actors and international movie stars at ease with each other and able to bring out the best in each other.

It's the late-30's and Hitler has come to Italy to talk to his supporters and, more importantly, Mussolini. He's greeted like traveling nobility, a rock star and the grandest of all movie stars rolled into one upon his arrival. Loren's seen getting her husband and six children ready for the rally. Once they've been sent off she is left to clean up the mess and ponder what it must be like to be swept up in the excitement. For her, Mussolini is as much a sublime authoritarian leader as he is a beefcake sex symbol. She has never truly put in any deep thought about his regime, who is siding with, what he is supporting, and why she so blindly just goes with it. All of that will soon change.

Marcello Mastroianni is cast against type as a homosexual who is trying to leave italy after losing his job and spouting out anti-government rhetoric. He specialized in self-tortured characters, but they were usually virile and womanizing. Remember his horn-dog playboy in Marriage Italian Style? Or the artistically constipated but romantically overflowing director in 8 ½? To see him play someone so quiet, tortured, and, yes, gay, is to see the true extent of his range as an actor. He had the harder job here since we're only told about his character and his psychology through his own words and actions. He doesn't turn Loren's character suddenly into an anti-Fascist political insurgent, but he gives her a tiny tremor within her life that we're entirely unsure how it will play out once the film is over. These characters feel like they will live and breathe on past the end of the film. They have enriched each others lives, but who knows how deeply they have effected them.