If there’s a moral to Luigi Comencini’s The Sunday Woman, it’s this: never assume your actions won’t have consequences. You might think having money means you can say anything – it’s my house so I can complain about the help if I want to… – but maybe those servants will find a suspicious letter and turn it over to the police, turning you into a murder suspect. It happens, and does happen, to Anna Carla (Jacqueline Bisset), when her unsent letter winds up in the hands of Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni), who brings her in for questioning.
That’s the problem with best-laid plans. Anna Carla’s jilted employees (Omero Antonutti and Clara Bindi) probably thought they were doing their ex-boss a disservice. You have to be really bored to get excited about being accused of murder, but Anna Carla might be that desperate, and while her friend (and intended recipient of the letter), Massimo (Jean-Louis Trintignant), is a little more peeved to be investigated (he doesn’t want word getting out that he’s dating a man), he’s not exactly worried that the police will charge him with murder.
The Sunday Woman has all the elements of a police drama, and presents as one at first, but once the investigation gets underway, The Sunday Woman is a low-key comedy with an arbitrary blue streak. Did the murder weapon have to be a stone phallus? In the sense that it was in the source novel by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini then yes, screenwriters, Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, stay true to the original, but otherwise no.
What The Sunday Woman is missing (which makes it weak as a police drama but not as a portrait of Turinese society) is a sense of urgency around finding the killer. Like an episode of Columbo (or more recently, Poker Face), The Sunday Woman does dedicate some time at the beginning to letting viewers get to know Architect Garrone (Claudio Gora), but he’s not an endearing figure and no one seems too choked up that he’s gone.
A murder’s a murder, though, and Commissioner Santamaria still has to solve the case, even if it means disturbing some of the local upper crust to do it. Continuing with the overall oddness of this investigation, though, Santamaria and his partner (played by Pino Caruso, who makes the most of his small part by having his character gradually fall apart physically) don’t actually do much. Instead, people keep coming to them with leads that they overheard at the salon or sought out themselves. The result: a very casual, if amusing, procedural that’s worth watching just to see Jacqueline Bisset say, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a killer man.”
Radiance’s Blu-Ray includes two new interviews. The first is with academic, Richard Dyer, who looks at how the film addresses class, Turinese society, and the relationship between Massimo and his boyfriend, Lello (Aldo Reggiani). The second is with Italian scholar, Giacomo Scarpelli (Furio’s son), who talks about his father’s career and many collaborations with long-term writing partner, Incrocci (including Big Deal on Madonna Street).
In a 2008 interview with cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, Tovoli shares how being hired by producer, Roberto Infascelli, initially set him off on the wrong foot with Comencini. He also has only good things to say about Mastroianni. Finally, Trintignant’s 1976 appearance on the French TV show, Allons au Cinéma, is included on the disc.
If you missed the limited edition (which includes a new booklet essay by Mariangela Sansone and a contemporary essay by Gérard Legrand), a standard edition of The Sunday Woman comes out on Blu-Ray starting September 19th from Radiance Films.
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