One Paragraph Movie Review: Il Conformista

Two hundred and fifty-first film: Il Conformista (The Conformist). As far as film reviews I’ve read are concerned, apparently this movie is about the adventures of a semi-reluctant fascist assassin under Mussolini. As far as I’m concerned, this is about architecture and moods and dresses and Paris and cinematography and fluid sexuality and suddenly kissing people. I feel like director Bertolucci could have made a movie about ice cream melting or killer bees and it would still look incredible and be confusing. But the confusing is excused exactly because of the look of the thing. It’s graceful and luxurious and stylish and brutal, and even though it’s made in 1970 about the late 1930s, it’s its own time and its own versions of both Rome and Paris. Every shot is irritatingly exquisite, and I’m cross at it for only slightly being about its story and mostly being about just incredible filmmaking. Points off for making me think I had to pay attention to the plot at all at the beginning, when all I had to do was make everything just dance through my eyeballs. Three borrowed fox stoles out of five.