Fellini's Feminist Fantasy

Italy is best known for two kinds of movies: straightforward spaghetti Westerns and the famous Fellini linguine (which is a surrealistic movie that makes you scratch your noodle). The latest of the latter is City of Women, scheduled for release this month in Europe and expected to arrive in American theaters sometime this fall. The film's main character (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a guileless middle-aged man named Snaporaz who falls asleep on a train and dreams that he has stumbled into a dangerous multidimensional world populated only by women. Although City of Women is superficially a commentary on feminists, it is more specifically Federico Fellini's personal perspective on the confusion that men of lustful but tender souls (like Snaporaz) have felt since the advent of women's lib. It abounds with Fellini's favorite ingredients: bizarre sex scenes, erotic symbolism and an astonishing array of (as you'll see) beautiful women.