Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Truly Dreadful Film

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.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

When I was a teenager, I was in love with Ornella Muti. I've already seen her in "The Most Beautiful Wife" (1970), "Romanzo Popolare" (1974), "Leonor" (1975), "Death of a Corrupt Man" (1977), "Viva Italia! (1977), "Atrocious Tales of Love and Death"(1979) and "The Taming of the Scoundrel"(1980). In 1979, I've met in Bucharest a girl that looked exactly like her, even more beautiful, with whom I had a relationship but, that's another story. She, Ornella, is the best thing in this movie. And then, even though she appears very little on the screen, but just as good, it's Katya Berger, as the girl on the beach. Very good is the "old acquaintance" (from movies like "Fat City", "Zandy's Bride", "Another Man, Another Chance") Susan Tyrrell, as crazy Vera. Very good Tanya Lopert too, in the role of ex-wife. Ben Gazzara, I never liked him, though I admit, he is a good, natural actor. Here he does the best role of all the movies I've seen with him. Marco Ferreri was a very very special film director. Very close, in many ways, to Fellini. Apart from the fact that they were both Italians, both of them with similar names, lived in the same period, both were concerned about the same themes, obsessed with what THE WOMAN means for the sensible, usually, intellectual man. Like Charles Bukowski, a poet, writer, soul, that I feel very close to me. The character of Gazzara, the drunk, sex obsessed and witty writer Charles Serking, is Bukowski himself.

Not the easiest of films to watch but a really decent attempt at portraying Bukowski on film and containing some great scenes and very fine performances.Ben Gazzara, who probably is too good looking but nevertheless most convincing in the lead role is excellent, Ornella Muti is simply wonderful (and probably too good looking as well!) and at her peak of beauty here. Just wish she wouldn't do those things with safety pins!Susan Tyrrel also impresses in key sequences, but it's the whole thing that works so well.With such a difficult subject matter,Ferreri has done a tremendous job.

Neither Bukowski nor Marco Ferreri's film will shock the audience any more. This is a grim tale, but told in an exciting way with the enigmatic Gazarra and the superb Ornella Muti in front of the camera, backed by legendary Italians, like production designer Dante Ferretti (who worked, among others, with Fellini and Pasolini, and recently bedazzled movie-goers with 'Titus') and D.O.P. Tonino Delli Colli ('The Good, the Bad and The Ugly'; 'Histoires Extraordinaires') A great film, some years ahead of its time, so now truly not to be missed.

Marco Ferreri is a challenging film artist. His films are powered by aninsistent, intense focus on the passions of flesh - the human responseto, need for, and meditation on our bodily bounds and desires. In hisother films he's explored the excesses which bind our mortality fromhunger to sex to suicide. Here he zeroes in on the texts of the poetCharles Bukowski, whose poetic life of booze and sexual conquest has himteetering on the brink of annihilation but remaining firmly in the realm of fierce, soulful expression. The main character in Tales of OrdinaryMadness is a poet whose relationships with women range from theinfantile to the sadomasochistic while he continues to binge on a dietof alcohol. What he doesn't expect is to fall in love. Being a poeticfilm (that is based around symbols and evocative imagery rather thanplot) this is a beautiful, estranged experience. Its a fascinatingglimpse of America from the outside. Vividly powered by Ben Gazzara'sperformance as the outsider poet in the shadows of society, this is afilm to be explored with a roving eye. Its a film where the sex scenesare not choreographed and sensual but brutal and unflinching in theirapproach to the passions of flesh. Its a rough film but one which takesus into the dark corners of love.