Especially on a Sunday

Four directors, four films, four seasons. Fall is the episode about the hairdresser who is involuntarily saddled with a dog. Winter tells the story of an old woman thirsting for love. Spring tells of unhappy love and summer is a furiously paced story about a young man's religious vision.

Comment:
For a while it was popular to make episodic films in Italy. Think of the comic gems ler;, Oggi, Domani and Boccaccio 70. But since the grandiose project where Kurosawa, Fellini and Bergman were to make a film each on love, the genre seems to have died out. Episodic movies don't attract big audiences say people in the business.
The producer Amedeo Pagani has already been awarded for having had the ''courage'' to make Especially on a Sunday. The four parts of the film are based on stories by the writer Tonino Guerra, who among other things has written a number of scripts for Fellini. The four films take place during different seasons in Romagna, near Rimini.
Now it's the young generation's turn to show what they can do: Francesco Barilli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Marco Tullio Giordana
and Giuseppe Tornatore. The most fasc~ nating one of them is the unknown Marco Tullio Giordana. His film deals with an old woman's longing for love. It also features the most talked of acting debut of the year:
Magdalena Fellini, whose brother Federico has tried to keep her as far away from the camera as possible for 60 years. As we all know one genius per family is enough. Another role in the same episode is played by Chiara Caselli, an Italian girl who we will definitely see more of in the future. She isn't new in Stockholm though. She played a part in Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho which was shown at last year's Stockholm Film Festival.
Giuseppe Tornatore's episode is funny and brings out laughter as well as tears. This time Tornatore portrays an old hairdresser and his love-hate relationship to a dog that suddenly falls in love with him. The part is played by Philippe Noiret, who has been heard to grumble about his co· actor: ''In Nuovo Cinema Paradiso I played opposite a child throughout the movie and this time opposite a dog''.
Peter Loewe