MOVIE REVIEW : HEAVY HAND SMOTHERS ‘SOTTO’

On an outing to an ancient, eerie sculpture garden in Bomarzo, Italy, three women notice two other women making love in a leaning stone tower.

At first they can’t believe their eyes, but when they do, one of three onlookers, a voluptuous blonde (Veronica Lario), remains transfixed. That night she dreams of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in “Notorious”--only she awakens to realize that she was Cary and her brunette neighbor (Luisa De Santis) was Ingrid.

Whatever can this mean? Lario confesses the dream to De Santis, who’s perplexed yet definitely intrigued. As an honest woman, Lario also feels compelled to tell her cabinetmaker husband (Enrico Montesano) of 10 years, but cannot bring herself to admit that the object of her infatuation is a woman.

For the first half-hour of “Sotto . . . Sotto” (at the Fine Arts), Lina Wertmuller strings us along deftly. But she allows Montesano’s predictably enraged reaction to his wife’s confession to become monotonous and tedious--along with a number of other ideas, Wertmuller has it in mind to poke some fun at the Latin male’s machismo at its most threatened--but Montesano’s unrelieved bombast and ultimate violence not only grow quickly tiresome but ugly, especially when an hour into the film he, at last, learns that his competition is female.

In his homophobia and ignorance in general, Montesano’s furious husband becomes more frightening than amusing. Wertmuller would seem to want us to have some of the sympathy for his plight that it deserves, yet seems able only to make him seem increasingly dangerous and repellent. He has an all-consuming passion for his wife--admirable after a decade of marriage--but seemingly not an ounce of tenderness. (You keep imagining the wonders Dudley Moore, who somewhat resembles Montesano, could perform in such a role.)

“Sotto . . . Sotto” cries for the blithe spirit Blake Edwards brought to “Victor/ Victoria,” which so skillfully revealed the absurdity and hypocrisy of prejudice in sexual attractions. Ironically, sotto , which means “under” or “beneath” in Italian, can also mean “subtle,” and Wertmuller has said that she wants the word to be taken in that sense in regard to her film’s title. What chutzpah! “Sotto . . . Sotto” is as subtle as a Three Stooges comedy.

Wertmuller’s sledgehammer approach is lamentable because she has some good, sturdy ideas and her film has some shape and bounce--until it’s allowed to dissolve into drawn-out hysterics. But in her determined avoidance of the sentimental, Wertmuller has slid from the robust to the downright brutal. As Diane Kurys did in “Entre Nous,” Wertmuller suggests that a woman can have needs and yearnings, more romantic than sexual, that cannot be fulfilled in a marriage to a conventional man. She also has fun with the way in which the movies can condition our notions of love and romance. And she has much hearty affection for the earthy, intensely Italian types who fill the film’s smaller roles.

Wertmuller is so emphatic a director that her attractive principals really cannot be blamed for not engaging us more, especially Montesano, who clearly has comic skills, never better revealed than in his haughty, dismissive shrug of a plain, 16-year-old seamstress in an Ursuline convent. (Lario in a moment of desperation has told him that this teen-ager, rather than De Santis, is the woman she loves.)

“Sotto . . . Sotto” (rated R for adult themes rather than sex, which is minimal) looks terrific, capturing the very essence of Italy in its quaint street settings strewn with Roman ruins, and has an ingratiating fox-trot score. But it smothers its shrewd, bemused perceptions of human emotion and folly with a heavy, heavy hand.

‘SOTTO . . . SOTTO’ A Triumph Films release of an Intercapital production. Producers Mario and Vittorio Cecchi Gori. Director Lina Wertmuller. Screenplay Wertmuller, Enrico Oldoini; from a story by Wertmuller. Camera Dante Spinotti. Music Paolo Conte. Art director Enrico Job. Set designer Gianni Giovagnoni. Costumes Christiana La Fayette. Film editor Luigi Zita. With Enrico Montesano, Veronica Lario, Luisa De Santis, Massimo Wertmuller, Mario Scarpetta, Isa Danieli, Elena Fabrizi, Antonia Dell’Atte, Renato D’Amore, Alfredo Bianchini. In Italian, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).