TRUE LOVE conquers all. At least it did in "The Libertine". Meanwhile, a restless young widow skips in and out of various sexual encounters, real and imagined, before meeting her match in a steady, plain-spoken radiologist.
The singularly sex-minded Italian film is not nearly as clever, sophisticated and amusing as it archly pretends. For all the worldly trimmingsslick color photography, careful interspersions of nudity and a general tone of coy blandness the picture is no wiser than the Farmer's Almanac. And not nearly so honest.
The idea of a neglected wife suddenly flitting around strenuously until she sees the light is certainly an old one. And it takes a little while to see through the slickly ornate facade of this exercise, very friskily directed by Pasquale Festa-Campanile and with the pert Catherine Spaak as the experimental heroine.
Rummaging through various sexual data in a luxurious, hideaway apartment kept by her late husband, she airily proceeds to make up for neglect and lost time with an assortment of partners. One is her husband's best friend. Another is a dentist. Add a tennis player. Add a grinning plumber, and a nameless sadist who cuffs her around.
The final chapter, Miss Spaak's lengthy stalking of the somber radiologist, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, has a flip geniality and some genuine brightness. The two performers carry it off with easy charm. If the rest of the picture had this, the sexual preoccupation might have been less monotonous and obvious. There might even have been a real point.
The singularly sex-minded Italian film is not nearly as clever, sophisticated and amusing as it archly pretends. For all the worldly trimmingsslick color photography, careful interspersions of nudity and a general tone of coy blandness the picture is no wiser than the Farmer's Almanac. And not nearly so honest.
The idea of a neglected wife suddenly flitting around strenuously until she sees the light is certainly an old one. And it takes a little while to see through the slickly ornate facade of this exercise, very friskily directed by Pasquale Festa-Campanile and with the pert Catherine Spaak as the experimental heroine.
Rummaging through various sexual data in a luxurious, hideaway apartment kept by her late husband, she airily proceeds to make up for neglect and lost time with an assortment of partners. One is her husband's best friend. Another is a dentist. Add a tennis player. Add a grinning plumber, and a nameless sadist who cuffs her around.
The final chapter, Miss Spaak's lengthy stalking of the somber radiologist, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, has a flip geniality and some genuine brightness. The two performers carry it off with easy charm. If the rest of the picture had this, the sexual preoccupation might have been less monotonous and obvious. There might even have been a real point.