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FILMS Italy

Brizzi’s Maschi Contro Femmine looks at battle of sexes

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“In my opinion, a man and a woman are the two people least suited to marry each other”: this quotation from Massimo Troisi opens Maschi Contro Femmine [+see also:
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(“Men Versus Women”), the new film by Fausto Brizzi (co-written with Marco Martani, Massimiliano Bruno and Pulsatilla). It is the first instalment in a diptych by the Night Before Exams [+see also:
trailer
film profile
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director, which focuses on the eternal “war of the sexes” theme.

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Brizzi returns to the ensemble comedy format, which he tried out in Ex [+see also:
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: so many characters and a mosaic of stories destined to intertwine (but not too much). There’s the volleyball coach-turned-new father (Fabio De Luigi) who has a crush on the team’s best woman player; womanizer Alessandro Preziosi and “frigid freak” Paola Cortellesi, neighbours who are poles apart; the unusual romantic-sexual triangle between straight guy Nicolas Vaporidis, his lesbian friend Chiara Francini (a talent to watch) and their mutual new flame, Sarah Felberbaum.

And then there’s a fifty-year-old woman (Carla Signoris) cheated on by her husband (Francesco Pannofino) and courted by a romantic colleague (Giuseppe Cederna), and a host of minor characters, who are barely sketched out (Luciana Littizzetto, Claudio Bisio, Emilio Solfrizzi) but will return – this time as protagonists – in the next instalment, Femmine Contro Maschi (“Women Versus Men”), which was shot at the same time.

The film is a new experiment in Italy: not so much in terms of its atmosphere (which, according to Brizzi, recalls “certain conflict comedies by Troisi and Francesco Nuti”), as its production. Indeed, while the first episode is produced by Federica and Fulvio Lucisano’s IIF in collaboration with Rai Cinema, the second (expected for release in February) was made with competitor Medusa.

Distributed by 01 Distribution, Maschi Contro Femmine will be released in Italy on October 27 on around 600 screens.

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(Translated from Italian)

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