Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini) (Patreon)

39/100

Second viewing, last seen 2001. This is where Fellini pretty much loses me for good (though there are a number of late films I still haven't seen), having drawn the wrong conclusion from 8½'s success. That film's fantastical elements work within its very specific context, viz. a portrait of the frustrated creative imagination; applying them to the inchoate (yet somehow epic) dissatisfaction of an emotionally neglected housewife who learns that her husband is cheating on her makes little sense conceptually, none whatsoever in practice here. What's more, Fellini makes Giulietta (I can't bring myself to call her Juliet) seem vaguely dim, which is not the case with Mastroianni's embodiment of his own alter ego. It'd be one thing if her fascination with Suzy, and the doors of perception that relationship ostensibly opens, made her fundamentally uninterested in confronting Giorgio; instead, the film alternates between ultra-tentative epicurean adventures and regular splashes of cold water that see Giulietta make a half-hearted stab at exposing the truth of her marriage and instantly surrender when Giorgio blithely sticks to his lies. On top of which, Suzy's world is so garishly exaggerated that Giulietta's visions, when they finally start to overwhelm her toward the end, feel almost superfluous. Apart from the now-strictly-historical novelty of "Fellini in color" (did my best to put myself in that headspace) and one of Rota's finest scores, there's not much that doesn't narcotize me. Granted, La Strada was a great film—great in its use of negative imagery more than anything else. But all this Juliet of the Spirits (or Satyricon), I find it incredibly...indulgent*, you know? He really is, he's one of the most indulgent* filmmakers. 

* Key word here is "indulgent."