SIFF 2008: We Want Roses, Too
(Italian title: Italian title:
Vogliamo Anche Le Rose)
Italy/Switzerland 2007
Review by Asli Omur
Posted June
1, 2008
We Want Roses, Too is a black and white, sometimes in color docu-spoof and
real-life look into the lives of Italian women in the 1960s and
70s on the verge of sexual revolution.
The film opens with a 20-something girl in 50s
fashion, wandering through a shop with comical narration of how
“you are a woman, therefore naturally curious,” you must see,
you must know and on it goes as the girl breaks into song asking
the future what will become of her womanhood. A magical mirror
shows her nude hippies dancing around a campfire to which she
gasps in fright. The scene follows by women of a certain age
that are simply referred to as “marriageable.”
The film touches upon Article 151 in Italian law
that proclaims the “Husbands Authority” in the union of
marriage, the role the Catholic Church has played in dictating
the sexual life of women in
Italy
and “honor crimes” that were only outlawed in the 1980s.
We Want Roses Too casually enters the homes
and private spaces of Italian women of the time all the while
using the diaries of three young women in the midst of feminist
discourse and liberation to discuss abortion, divorce and the
stereotypical ideas of marriage as an Italian girls’ destiny,
not a choice. The diaries of Anita, Teresa and Valentina
represent different time periods and locations within Italy,
their experiences with their maturing bodies and sexuality.
Their perspectives in their own words, feels like being an
“outsider” to their own femininity. Revulsion, anger and
confusion permeate the screen, particularly when Anita proclaims
that “Boys are only concerned about pleasure;” naturally their
own masculine pleasure. Coming to terms with her own fathers’
infallibility, she writes that she wants to yell at him, “Look
how you have messed me up!”
When young people are asked what they feel about sex education
courses, they claim Italy is not as “sexually progressive as
Sweden” and therefore will be offended. When women fearful of
sexual intercourse are advised by a male counselor, he
negatively declares, “So, you’re frigid.”
The young women often refer to themselves as “erupting
volcanoes” in a consumer society that uses male and female
sexuality to collide and sell product.
Anita’s fears of sex, Teresa’s nightmares of a three headed baby
after an abortion, Valentina’s anger towards women considered to
be good lovers makes her spiteful and yet make all three
faceless women endearing and true to life the world over. A
husband’s response to feminism as feeling “violently attacked
and beaten” is shocking. Another Sicilian woman’s proclamation
that her husband is her “boss” and Valentina’s solitary
masturbation that is looked down upon make this film even more
heart-wrenching.
We Want Roses Too is eerie. Disturbing footage of protests in which women are
beaten for inciting demonstration and old commercial images of a
perfect housewife pepper the film, all the while sticking true
to the loneliness of womanhood in a man’s world and the beauty
of the female form.
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2006 All content property of European Weekly unless where otherwise
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