Directors – Guido Manuli, Maurizio Nichetti – 1991 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 94m
*****
A sexually insecure man turns into an animated cartoon character as he tries to start a relationship with the woman of his dreams.
PLOT
The shy Maurizio (Maurizio Nichetti) works dubbing old black and white cartoons while his more outgoing brother (Patrizio Roversi) dubs porno movies. Martina (Angela Finocchiaro) is a freelance fulfiller of her clients’ bizarre psychosexual fantasies. Upon meeting, the two are attracted to one another, but Maurizio’s inhibitions in the face of romance cause him to be transformed – slowly – into an animated cartoon character. Martina, meanwhile, is highly dissatisfied with her hitherto love life and is searching for a man somehow different from all others she’s known…
OPINION
Easily saleable by the epithet “adult Roger Rabbit“, this gentle and greatly likeable Italian sex comedy makes cinema history with a final bedroom scene in which live action woman disappears under the sheets with a cartoon lover! Early animation buffs will spot interesting works by the Fleischer and Terry Studios, with hilarious sequences where Maurizio adds a cacophony of real time sound effects as a one man band. Later, little animated black and white ducks crawl into his coat; later still, his hands turn into animated gloves to grope Martina (against Maurizio’s will) at a restaurant.
Variety is further provided by Maurizio’s dubbing one of his brother’s porno movies with his own brand of over the top animated sound effects. The world of Martina’s clients, including a mugger who attacks her once a week at an appointed time and place and a taxi driver who performs daredevil motor stunts while she’s a passenger, proves compelling in an offbeat way.
Live action director Nichetti, playing himself, once again exploits the comic skill evident in his earlier The Icicle Thief (Maurizio Nichetti, 1989). Elsewhere, Guido Manuli’s cartoon animation is spot on, although there is less than in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988) for budgetary reasons. What there is, though, is terrific, as is the matching with the live action. Where the more expensive film fails as a film noir / cartoon about adultery (for children), this one succeeds admirably as an essay on the possibilities and limitations of romantic love.
Clip 1 (taxi) – Italian, no subs:
Clip 2 (final transformation) – Italian, no subs:
Review originally published in Film And Video – The Magazine, 1992.