Review of La Dolce Vita (1960) by Tiberio S — 18 Feb 2017

Journalists: they're flying above the world, ascended over the women they flirt with, the Lord protecting them.

By the closing moments of the film, we're wondering just how far Marcello will go, how much of a sleezy "worm" he really is. Here his good friend has just murdered his children and committed suicide, and now he's out partying, wrecking his friend's home, and trying to push the boundaries of the party into stripping and even sex. When he doesn't quite get his way, he resorts to humiliating another girl at the party, turning her into a chicken by drenching her in water and sticking feathers ripped from a pillow onto her. The party ends with each person given a grand exit to dance and music as Marcello throws feathers in the air - it feels like we're going to end it here, and the sense that this film will have many unanswered questions, loose ends, and possibly leave us unsatisfied, creeps over. The film keeps going, but why? What is this little epilogue at the beach where they find a dead sting ray and he sees the young girl from the cafe? My take is that she's the embodiment of what the film will define as "too far," since we're wondering what depths Marcello will stoop to. She is unquestionably underage, but there is a loving glance between the two. He wants her to come along, but she interprets his gesture as a wave goodbye - they can't see each other clearly. Happenstance keeps them apart, perhaps for the better. His appetite would never be satisfied with her, she'd only be as good as her youth, which will eventually go away. Marcello does not learn how to love in this film, he is bound to hedonism, alcoholism, and disgracing others. The question isn't so much would he or wouldn't he with the young girl - he most certainly would - it's will he or won't he, and it turns out he doesn't. That's just how it happens.

Like Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street, we're drawn in and entertained by Marcello's antics. We're equally satisfied and frustrated with his losses, like when his reunion with his first encounter turns into a serious love talk, only to be flipped on him as she falls into another man's arms right amidst his admitting he loves her. But like a Fellini film usually does, we drift into the next scenario and away from that one - that world now exists solely in the imagination as we watch a wonderfully bizarre ghost hunt in an old beaten down house that's part of this family's wealthy estate. Here, a woman will simulate sex with a ghost, and Marcello will find himself in another sexcapade.