Monella -1998- ~upd~ -

This performance keeps the film from ever feeling exploitative. Lola is the active agent 100% of the time. She controls the narrative, the pacing, and the physicality of every encounter. Masetto, for all his chisel-jawed masculinity, is a passenger in her joyride. In its own wacky way, Monella is a surprisingly feminist text—arguing that a woman has the absolute right to define the terms of her own sexual debut, even if those terms are maddeningly whimsical. Today, Monella is not discussed in the same breath as Fellini or Antonioni. It belongs to a different, messier, more pulpy cinematic family. It sits on the shelf next to John Waters’ Female Trouble , Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! , and Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown .

For the duration of the film, Lola orchestrates a campaign of relentless sexual teasing. She flaunts her body in increasingly outrageous outfits (or lack thereof). She stages "accidental" voyeuristic moments. She taunts him, dances for him, and whispers promises of what awaits after the ceremony. Masetto, a well-meaning but frustrated man, is caught in a purgatory of perpetual arousal. He begs, he pleads, he fumes. Lola merely smiles, bats her eyelashes, and says, "After the wedding." Monella -1998-

The classic narrative of 1950s Italy would dictate that Lola is a pious, fearful girl saving herself for the wedding altar. Monella gleefully flips this trope on its head. Lola is not saving herself out of shame or religious guilt; she is saving herself on principle—for the honeymoon. She has decided that the wedding night must be an earth-shattering, Dionysian explosion of lust, and she fears that if she and Masetto consummate their relationship beforehand, the edge will be dulled. This performance keeps the film from ever feeling

Monella is a moving gallery dedicated to this thesis. Cinematographer Massimo Di Venanzo bathes every scene in a golden, honeyed light. The camera loves Lola—not as a passive object, but as an active, self-aware subject of her own desire. When Lola walks through the village, the camera lingers on the sway of her hips with a reverent, almost religious focus. Brass uses extreme wide-angle lenses and curious, fish-eye perspectives that mirror the distorted, fever-pitch reality of Masetto’s frustrated psyche. Masetto, for all his chisel-jawed masculinity, is a

Monella is not a film for everyone. It is too vulgar for the prim, too soft for the hardcore, and too Italian for the mainstream. But for those who find its wavelength—a frequency of pure, pulsing, pink-tinged joie de vivre —it remains an indispensable, hilarious, and breathtakingly beautiful celebration of the world’s oldest game.

There is, however, a maddening catch. Lola is a virgin, and she wants to keep it that way. But not for the reasons one might expect.