Selected Appetizers

By JAY COCKS

HOW FUNNY CAN SEX BE?

Directed by DINO RISI Screenplay by RUGGERO MACCARI

Silly, dirty and about as broad as your grandpa's barn door, How Funny Can Sex Be? has turned out to be one of the few successful foreign films of the year. Full of coarse-ground jokes about some of the more unlikely vicissitudes of love, Italian-style, the film is turning a neat dollar apparently because of, not despite, its defects. The sex in this movie may not be very funny, but it is bawdy enough to be naughty without being graphic enough to offend. In other words, it is a safe sex comedy.

The movie gets a charge from the high-voltage presence of Giancarlo Giannini, Director Lina Wertmuller's favorite actor (Seven Beauties; Swept Away). Here, with rambunctious energy, Giannini assumes roles in eight separate vignettes, playing everything from a lawyer hung up on dowagers to a simple, wistful yokel who unknowingly ar ranges an assignation with a transvestite. His partner in most of these episodes is a young Italian actress, Laura Antonelli, who, in a more innocent time, might have been called a lollapalooza. Antonelli has the face of a ravished angel, the shape of legend.

Her form and presence are well exploited here, although modesty at one point combines with technical ineptness to produce an awkward effect. In a dream sequence, Antonelli appears, dressed in a nun's habit of sheerest gossamer, running toward the camera in slow motion. This affords a welcome opportunity to examine the female form in motion, a salutary study quickly spoiled by the sight of gauze, securely fastened by surgical tape, covering the actress's privates. Soft-core security measures such as this may destroy even the most innocent reveries, but conclusively demonstrate that Antonelli, underneath it all, is just an old-fashioned girl.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.