Working in a realm rare for him - the sexual comedy - Wajda satirizes the “scene” in urban Poland of the Sixties, from discotheques to discourse, focusing on the supposed emancipation of women and emasculation of men. A hapless librarian named Wlodek shares his dreary life and small apartment with his domineering wife and extended family. In an attempt to broaden his horizons, he embarks on an affair with a beautiful young intellectual who wears fly-shaped glasses, performs semiological analyses in bed, and generally preys on the lives of the disaffected in an attempt to become the woman behind a great artist. Wajda has commented on the fierce misogyny of the film which Variety called “a small beauty of a film” and which is, ironically, dedicated to women: “The women in Poland have gained their freedom very quickly, it is true.... Being a comedy, everything was simplified (in Hunting Flies). If one had time to think longer about it, the woman who is the driving force would have more sympathy on her side than the man.” (JB)