Demure & Ardent

The Conjugal Bed is the May-and-December movie that won Marina Vlady the best actress award at this year's Cannes Festival (TIME, June 14). She plays Regina, a demure and religious girl who catches the eye of Alfonso (Ugo Tognazzi), an auto dealer twice her age. He pursues her with such passion that she is forced to protest: "I'll give myself only to the man I marry."

For Alfonso, marriage becomes a nightmare and the big brass bed in their room an innerspring torture rack. Then abruptly--too abruptly--the film shifts moods. Regina is smugly, victoriously pregnant; the queen bee has been served. Soon Alfonso finds her frigidity as maddening as her earlier ardor. One last time she condescends, and he is carted away in an ambulance.

Bed follows the current fad among Italian films of merciless misogyny. The first half is wildly funny, the second half movingly pathetic. These two virtues add up to a fault: after farce, pathos makes a bitter chaser.

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