We Want Roses Too

Alina Marazzi's collage-style documentary offers an overview of Italy's sexual revolution, combining media images and popular music together with the personal stories of three women speaking in voiceover. Anita Caprioli talks about her adolescence in mid-1960s Milan, while clips of women from television shows, advertisements, instructional videos, and home movies illustrate her comments, creating a sort of Everywoman effect. Reading from diary entries, Caprioli says she's lost her desire to go to church, feels disconnected from her sexuality, and doesn't find therapy particularly helpful. Teresa Saponangelo, who hails from Rome, picks up the narrative in the mid-1970s, a time in which she became pregnant after engaging in unprotected sex, and had an abortion (not a minor matter, to be sure, but even more problematic in a Catholic country). Valentina Carnelutti, a Rome divorcée looking for personal fulfillment, concludes the voiceover in the late-1970s. Stylistically, Marazzi's We Want Roses Too has little in common with the conventional talking-head approach used in traditional documentaries, recalling instead auteurs such as Jean-Luc Godard, who often inserted advertising images into his films, and Terry Gilliam, who created animated segments for Monty Python episodes using vintage illustrations. Viewers primarily interested in facts and figures may find Marazzi's approach here obtuse, but this visually engaging film still raises questions about women's rights that are likely to resonate with many viewers. Incidentally, the title stems from a slogan chanted by striking female textile workers in Massachusetts, circa 1912: “We want bread, but we want roses, too.” Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)