SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Claire Dunne One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

manicmotionman There is a scene from I Knew Her Well between Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) and The Writer (Joachim Fuchsberger) that says a lot about the film:The Writer: "Trouble is, she likes everything. She's always happy. She desires nothing, envies no one, is curious about nothing. You can't surprise her. She doesn't notice the humiliations, though they happen to her every day. It all rolls off her back like some waterproof material. Zero ambition. No moral code. Not even a whore's love of money. Yesterday and tomorrow don't exist for her. Even living for today would mean too much planning, so she lives for the moment. Sunbathing, listening to records, and dancing are her sole activities. The rest of the time she's mercurial and capricious, always needing brief new encounters with anyone at all... just never with herself." Adriana: "I'm Milena, right? Is that what I'm like? Some sort of dimwit?"The Writer: "On the contrary. You may be the wisest of all."I couldn't encapsulate the brilliance of this incredibly well directed character essay any better.

rodrig58 Not much happens in this film. Everything relies on the charm of actors, their presence fills the screen, it electrifies: Stefania Sandrelli (a sexy-angel, perhaps the most sensual angel-woman that the 7th art offered), Ugo Tognazzi, Enrico Maria Salerno and Nino Manfredi (all three have no need of words to make a big role in a film), and Jean-Claude Brialy, Mario Adorf, Franco Fabrizi and a very young Franco Nero in a small role, unique. 60's music, Sergio Endrigo, Mina, Ornella Vanoni, Peppino Di Capri, Gilbert Becaud, contribute greatly to achieving a distressing atmosphere, which will eventually lead the heroine(Stefania Sandrelli) to suicide. Sad but you can watch it again and again and again.

jakob13 Criterion Collection has released 'Io la conocevo bebe' (I knew her well) a half century after its first showing. Stefania Sandrelli carries the film admirably, with a star studded cameos of the 1960s, say Jena-Claude Brialy, Ugo Tognazzi, Joachim Fuchsberger and a young handsome Franco Nero. A poor peasant girl comes to Rome to make her fortune. She is pretty and likes to have fun. She is bait for men who use her, take her money and drop her. She pays her way with her body and her money. She works at odd jobs, but is kept by an madam of sorts in a high rent, high rise flat in Rome. Adriana surfs her own sweet life--her own dolce vita. Pietangeli the director skilfully uses the pope tunes of the day to anchor the mood and the state of Adriana's existential highs and lows. A writer played by Fuchsberger limns her character: she lives for the moment. And when she has a chance to make it, the film of her mocks her pretensions and rips her dreams through ridicule; she is mocks as someone of no education, a 20 something who goes from bed to bed and in the end aging will walk the pavement for her living. Humiliated she throws herself off her balcony as the credits roll up the screen. A morality play? Perhaps. A commentary on a youth that is not golden and knows no future but the fleeting moment of sense 'fame', if you can call it that.

liehtzu Another of the many Italian movies about alienation in the post-war years, very well made, beautifully shot, often interesting - but not up there with L'AVVENTURA or LA DOLCE VITA. The problem is the main character, one of the horde of young, nouveau-American European youth of the 1960s, ignorant of the war or much else besides, who only enjoys dancing to moronic music, polishing her nails, and reading comic books. Of course, she wants to be an actress. She goes through as many hairstyles as boyfriends in the course of the film, and though among them there are some recognizable faces (Franco Nero is the shy young auto mechanic here; the following year he would be cold-blooded killer DJANGO), the hairstyles tend to be more memorable than the men.The problem with making a movie about a character as vapid as this young woman is that her story isn't compelling. Even though we find out later that she's really just a poor girl from the country from a hard-luck farm family, even though we cringe at the number of times she's exploited through the course of the film - there is one particularly cruel scene in which a young man, after sleeping with her, has her telephone the girl he really likes, just in case her mother answers - the life and death of a bubblegum-popping wannabe actress is not the stuff of great tragedy. She takes a leap just when self-awareness finally dawns: no one cares for her (except Nero's character, who she doesn't even notice), she's the butt of jokes, she really is just a beautiful idiot with no future once the looks fade. Of course, the real theme of the movie might be that thinking too much is a bad thing: in one telling sequence a jaded writer says as much to her, that her brainless, live-for-the-moment existence might be some kind of unconscious wisdom. But the life of the girl, who I suspect is a kind of symbol of the director's horror of modern Italy, grows a little tiresome before the end of the film.