Revenge of an offended woman Lisa (Lisa Gastoni) is a respectable lady of forty from high Milan society. Her husband Paolo (Gabriele Ferzetti) is a fashion designer who sees marriage as a reasonable compromise between a man and a woman who give each other a certain freedom. However, Lisa, it seems, lives on the principle - "you know less, you sleep better." She is sincerely attached to her husband and prefers not to pay attention to his affairs on the side. How she does this, however, is not very clear: Lisa does not do anything, except that occasionally changes the tiles in the apartment she rents out. In the absence of work, in theory, it would be possible to at least show interest in the personal life of the husband. However, Lisa prefers not to know anything.
Lisa’s life would continue on a rolled-up and uninteresting track, if at one party some “secret admirer” quietly threw in her purse a note with the following content: “Tomorrow at seven meet at the hotel “Cavour” or I will kill myself.” Lisa, as a faithful wife who has no secrets from her husband, tells Paolo about the note, vainly trying to figure out the mysterious admirer. She also tells about the note to her best friend Carla (Elsa Martinelli). Then, driven by curiosity, Lisa still goes to the specified hotel. But in the hotel, no sigher met her, but she became an unwitting witness to how her husband climbs in the elevator to the room with a sexy young blonde.
It is now clear that Lisa was the victim of a brutal prank. Representatives of the highest Milanese society are used to cheating on each other right and left, for them it is a lifestyle, and the old-fashioned Lisa, who is faithful to her reveler husband, seems ridiculous to them. Or friends-"well-wishers" simply decided to push Lisa to adultery, so that she did not deprive herself of the joys of life.
First, Lisa, in order to save face in front of her friends - primarily Carla - comes up with an affair with the engineer Franco Raimondi (Jean Sorel), a handsome millionaire who drags into bed - but only for one night! - almost all interesting women from her environment. However, Carla herself is in connection with Franco, so the story of a friend for the time being perceives only as entertainment. However, at the decisive moment, she will not be able to suppress the desire to gloat and humiliate Lisa, admitting to her that the whole society has long laughed at her fictitious novel. And then Lisa will think of a “terrible revenge”, which is capable only of an offended woman.
This film is not bad, although highly overrated Italian director Alberto Lattuada is extremely uneven. The actors seem to play well, but the development of the plot does not cause much interest. The director has a weak command of tempo rhythm, the picture is full of unnecessary and not carrying a special semantic load of small episodes - then Lisa got into the car and turned around, then Lisa entered the store and stood at the window, then Lisa was massaged and so on. Lattouada, alas, is not Antonioni, who knew how to fill such meaningless details with some meaning. As for the extremely inorganic "erotic" scenes, they are so primitive and squalid that they look like the work of some second-rate assistant, not one of the founders of neorealism. In general, the film would be good to walk scissors.
Not very successful choice for the main role of Lisa Gastoni. Not only is this actress absolutely devoid of internal energy, which, unlike her, just radiates her antagonist Martinelli, so she is still deprived of any special acting abilities, and beauty, to put it mildly, does not shine. And when in the finale, Lisa turns into a super bitch who breaks the hearts of all men to the right and to the left, it just can not be believed. However, Luis Bakalov wrote wonderful music for the film, which, however, becomes frankly bad in stupid scenes called erotic.
6 out of 10