Help Me, My Love

The first of Vitti’s films with Alberto Sordi is a bittersweet domestic comedy that sets about debunking the stereotypes of the faithless husband/long-suffering wife. Giovanni Macchiavelli (Sordi) is the thoroughly modern husband who espouses an open marriage to his spouse (Vitti) and then is devastated when she takes him at his word, proving herself even more Machiavellian than he. Nothing comes together for this mutually hypocritical duo, but embedded in the hilarity is a melancholy study of a man’s unrequited love for his own wife. Sordi directs with an eye for the comic gesture and the absurd moment.