Ginger e Fred (1986, Italy)

A Federico Fellini film, with a more recognisable plot than some of his work. Two first-rate entertainers did a memorable and famous dance act together years ago when they portrayed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; after a long gap of retirement, and now in late life, they come together once more in a television show that specialises in slightly bizarre presentations. The tv show also has a number of other celebrity impersonators and attractions, including a transvestite played by Augusto Poderosi.

The two main characters, played superbly by Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroiani, are mixed in a turmoil of the strange journey to the studio (where they arrive separately), the unfamiliar rules of television, the emotional meeting and revisiting of old times, and the physical needs of the dance performance (the last not well represented in the film, I thought).

Fellini's interest for the surreal is everywhere here, most noticeably in the early part of the film where posters at the side of the road all seem to have a sexual, if not fetishistic, character to them. Like some modern comedy film, you have to keep alert to what looks mundane in the background, in case it's a significant reference to the theme.

For me though the film was too much like hard work, and Fellini's oblique approach to the theme, with a great volume of irrelevant or indirectly relevant detail, made me impatient to get to the climax of the film, which I felt to be a disappointment.

HF October 2003

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