City of Women

Fellini’s career-long fascination with women receives one of its most thorough and unbridled treatments in this kaleidoscopic, straight-from-the-id fantasia. Mastroianni stands in for the filmmaker as Snàporaz, a lecherous womanizer transported to a through-the-looking-glass alternate universe ruled by women. There are roller-skating radical feminists, strung-out lesbian new wavers, and an ex-wife—oh my!—as Snàporaz/Fellini is forced to reckon with his own complex, often contradictory views of women. Extravagantly surreal, City of Women is a hallucinatory, circus carnival odyssey through the dream life of one of cinema’s great visionaries.