Gran bollito

I just couldn't get on with this. This starred Shelley Winters, who I like and also featured Max Von Sydow and Rita Tushingham, all good but from the very beginning I was in trouble. I had read someone who suggested this was a cross between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and La Cage Aux Folles and they were not that far wrong but I had perhaps underestimated how much the string of elderly women being played by men would hinder my enjoyment. More especially, I think it helped to keep me distanced and I found it difficult to relate. Admittedly, I feel this was in part due to pretty poor translation on the subtitles but even allowing for this the film is too long and there is far too much uninteresting dialogue. It was only with the help of some judicious fast forwarding that I made it to the end at all and I have to say that things did come together fairly well as we learn that the hoary old Italian mamma being fixated by her son did take on a little more significance with the pending war. Winters is okay but maybe a little one note and it was this relentless singleminded nature of the whole thing that had me almost switching off too many times.