This satire of 1970s Italian politics places a rather stupid man in the center of nearly every political movement happening at the time. Southern Italian man Mimi is a working class stiff, just trying to make his way in the world. He understands that workers need rights, but when he is transferred to a position in Rome accidentally by the mob, he happens to meet a highly educated Northern Italian woman who is a textbook intellectual socialist. He clearly only understands that she's for the rights of workers, but once they become lovers, he shows his true lack of understanding by extending stereotypical Sicilian patriarchal jealousy at the idea of her joining other communists in defending the rights of men who aren't him or other metal workers.
Mimi somehow accidentally continues to garner the favor of the mob - probably because he's a passive sheeple who is afraid to talk to the police about what's happening, and because he hates his boss and other working class bosses too much to ask for their help - so they organize to have Mimi returned to a position in Sicily, where Mimi must hide his new woman and baby from his traditional Sicilian wife (who hates sex, of course). While Mimi's "true love" stays true to her socialist values living apart from Mimi and his wife with Mimi's son in an apartment, Mimi is ordered by the mafia to bully other workers and completely turn against any and all socialist values he has. So, being the wimp he is, he agrees and turns on a dime on other workers to cover his own butt.
Mimi fakes impotence to get out of sleeping with his wife (who isn't especially demanding about sex anyway) but he leaves her alone so much to visit with his mistress and mother of his child, she happens to strike up a relationship with another man and she becomes pregnant with that man's baby the one and only time they make love. Mimi, being the moron you should have gathered that he is by now, acts like a complete hypocrite and goes home to beat his wife, whom he's not even sleeping with, for getting pregnant by another man, although Mimi has fathered a child with his urban mistress, and takes on the stereotypical macho role of a brutal Sicilian husband defending his "honor" against his (unsurprisingly) unfaithful wife.
I feel like this movie was written as a gentle criticism for Italian people, especially Southern Italian people, to watch in the 1970s to question the social mores of their own culture at the time. Watching it as an American in 2023 - even knowing about the politics of the mafia in Sicily in the mid-to-late 20th century - is quite boring because I've thought about all these things and seen all of these tired stereotypes before.
Much less impressive than Love and Anarchy, which in my opinion is a much stronger and inherently timeless socialist film by Wertmuller. I'm stunned that The Seduction of Mimi has been upheld as the more memorable work when Love and Anarchy is clearly the more mature and multi-cultural timeless work of art.
Mimi somehow accidentally continues to garner the favor of the mob - probably because he's a passive sheeple who is afraid to talk to the police about what's happening, and because he hates his boss and other working class bosses too much to ask for their help - so they organize to have Mimi returned to a position in Sicily, where Mimi must hide his new woman and baby from his traditional Sicilian wife (who hates sex, of course). While Mimi's "true love" stays true to her socialist values living apart from Mimi and his wife with Mimi's son in an apartment, Mimi is ordered by the mafia to bully other workers and completely turn against any and all socialist values he has. So, being the wimp he is, he agrees and turns on a dime on other workers to cover his own butt.
Mimi fakes impotence to get out of sleeping with his wife (who isn't especially demanding about sex anyway) but he leaves her alone so much to visit with his mistress and mother of his child, she happens to strike up a relationship with another man and she becomes pregnant with that man's baby the one and only time they make love. Mimi, being the moron you should have gathered that he is by now, acts like a complete hypocrite and goes home to beat his wife, whom he's not even sleeping with, for getting pregnant by another man, although Mimi has fathered a child with his urban mistress, and takes on the stereotypical macho role of a brutal Sicilian husband defending his "honor" against his (unsurprisingly) unfaithful wife.
I feel like this movie was written as a gentle criticism for Italian people, especially Southern Italian people, to watch in the 1970s to question the social mores of their own culture at the time. Watching it as an American in 2023 - even knowing about the politics of the mafia in Sicily in the mid-to-late 20th century - is quite boring because I've thought about all these things and seen all of these tired stereotypes before.
Much less impressive than Love and Anarchy, which in my opinion is a much stronger and inherently timeless socialist film by Wertmuller. I'm stunned that The Seduction of Mimi has been upheld as the more memorable work when Love and Anarchy is clearly the more mature and multi-cultural timeless work of art.