I Knew Her Well is an Italian film from 1965 staring Stefania Sandrelli. I saw it recently at Film Forum but its also available on DVD from Criterion Collection. Here is a bit of the Criterion Collection’s description of the film on its website:
Over a series of intimate episodes, just about every one featuring a different man, a new hairstyle, and an outfit to match, the unsung Italian master Antonio Pietrangeli, working from a script he cowrote with Ettore Scola, composes a deft, seriocomic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure. I Knew Her Well is a thrilling rediscovery, by turns funny, tragic, and altogether jaw-dropping.
I have to take major issue with this text and the prominence it gives to Pietrangeli and Scola. Where’s any mention of Stefania Sandrelli!? Nowhere!! Sandrelli is only mentioned in the full text in a parenthesis — (Divorce Italian Style’s Stefania Sandrelli).
But it’s Sandrelli who carries the film with her tour de force performance as the seemingly hapless ingenue Adriana, who rises from aspiring starlet to star. And at times during this film I thought about Cindy Sherman. I also thought about Chantal Akerman. Clearly Sandrelli was an equal collaborator and creator of this film, which is a fascinating “biting critique of sexual politics and the culture of celebrity”. And Sandrelli’s comedic genius in the role also brought to mind my two other favorite comedic performances by women — Anna Faris in Smiley Face (also an actress who basically singlehandedly carries the film) and my all time favorite Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor. Someday maybe I’ll write an essay about these three performances. But not today.