Metti, una sera a cena (a.k.a. "Love Circle", literally "Let's Say, an Evening for Dinner") is a 1969 Italian drama film directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. It was entered into the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.[1] The film was described as "a bourgeois comedy that trespassed conventional moral lim- its and presented a picture of—and encouraged—a new freedom of casual sexual relations."[2]
Michel is a successful bourgeois playwright who fantasizes an affair between his beautiful wife, Nina , and his best friend, Max, a bisexual actor. Unbeknownst to him, the pair have in fact been lovers for years, though Max is really in love with Michel. While Nina is occupied with Max, Michel drifts into an affair with a rich, but lonely, single woman. The four meet regularly for dinner at the home of Michel and Nina where they indulge in bored, amoral conversation.
As a diversion, Max suggests to Nina that they add a third player to their bedroom games: Ric, Max's anarchist/poet boyfriend who lives in a dankly luxurious basement and sells himself to both men and women. After a while, Ric finds himself falling in love with Nina and eventually attempts suicide over her. Nina discovers Ric in time to save him and decides to leave Michel to live with Ric. But soon their relationship withers and Nina returns to her husband. It's then that Michel decides to invite Ric into the circle, as they go on meeting at dinner and playing their games of love and seduction.
The production "consolidated [ Dario Argento' s] relationship with two individuals who would prove crucial to The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, actor Tony Musante (who would play Argento's protagonist, Sam Dalmas) and producer Goffrey Lombardo."[6]
Reception
Il Morandini writes about the film: "From a play [...] that somehow managed to suggest an existential desperation and the ash-flavoured erotic games. Here, in their perverse acrobatics and drawing-room suffering, the characters are the triumph of the fake. Well acted, though? Very well."[7]
FilmTv.it stated: "Giuseppe Patroni Griffi brings one of his greatest theatrical successes to the screen, but the ambiguous family portrait of the original fades into the film's self-serving aestheticism. Beautiful, but Pirelli calendar-like, are the erotic images photographed by Tonino Delli Colli."[8]
The film is also remembered for Ennio Morricone's original soundtrack.[9]
↑ Laura Morandini, Luisa Morandini & Morando Morandini, Il Morandini 2009. Dizionario dei film, Bologna, Zanichelli, 2008, p. 907, ISBN 978-88-08-12257-5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
