In the morning, a married couple with three children wish each other a good day. At the office, the husband is having an affair with his secretary; the wife, after sending the children off with an au pair, welcomes a lover into the home. That evening, the family is back together, in front of the television. Once again, Cesare Zavattini came up with the original idea for the film, which constitutes one of the episodes in a project entitled Le italiane e l’amore, inspired by a famous collection of female confessions curated by Gabriella Parca. However, as the episode uses parallel editing to follow the couple’s day, it hastily avoids any anti-bourgeois sentiments or sexual allusions. The two carefree protagonists, surrounded by objects (books such as the Kinsey Reports, and obviously food: spaghetti), appear as a cynical, desolate parody of the incommunicability and crisis that permeates Antonioni’s couples, with the addition of the anarchist intrusion of some typically obnoxious Ferrerian children and small, almost surreal moments, such as the appearance of a trumpet player.

Emiliano Morreale