Cinema: Charnel Knowledge

SEVEN BEAUTIES

Directed and Written by UNA WERTMULLER

Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini) is a survivor, and Lina Wertmuller's smashing new movie concerns both the ways he stays alive and the price he pays. Seven Beauties is a death-house comedy, brutal, audacious, liberating. As previous films like Love and Anarchy, The Seduction of Mimi and Swept Away demonstrate, Wertmuller takes a ringmaster's glee in barraging an audience with tawdry splendors and keeping it dazzled. She knows how to make us laugh, hard and long, even while we question ourselves for doing it. It is from the...