Word: fellini
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Directed by Federico Fellini...
Screenplay by Federico Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi...
Eighteen years ago, in 8½ Federico Fellini confessed that he was a director who had nothing to say, and despite the arresting imagery with which he made his mea culpa, one was more than willing to concede the point. In the next seven films he demonstrated it with ever more empty extravagance. Now, confronting this gaudily misanthropic survey of how feminism has tipped the balance of power in the war between the sexes, one finds that one has moved beyond outrage and impatience to simple weariness...
...movies, it is usually the couple two rows back who turn out to be practitioners of voice-over chic, tenderly broadcasting all the half-baked thoughts they ever half-understood about Fellini. Dial a phone number and the absent owner's talking machine coughs a set piece of cuteness before granting a moment for you to interject a brief message. As for bridge players, the typical foursome hardly finishes the play of a hand before the air burbles with a redundant rehashing...
...film. "What's that music?" one will ask referring to the soundtrack after a particularly absorbing drama. Finally the improbable conclusion, and one of the film's few hackneyed moments: an elegant string ensemble in an alley-the soundtrack's players taking a bow? -stirs memories of similar Fellini incongruities, satirized here by the moment's harshness...