Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981)

Very best movie i ever watch

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The writings of cult favorite Charles Bukowski are the basis for this deliberately paced journey into the underbelly of L.A. society, as an alcoholic, degenerate poet & lecturer, Charles Serking (Ben Gazzara), muses on the lives that he and his associates lead. He is particularly taken with a very troubled prostitute named Cass (Ornella Muti), and embarks on a sort of relationship with her, even as he continues to indulge in his more debased whims. Meanwhile, it seems as if his career might really be going somewhere, as publishers in NYC come calling.This film is going to be a hard slog for some people. It's an interminable outing that requires its audience to spend time with characters who are off putting to one degree or another. Still, some people should appreciate what could be seen as this films' honesty when it comes to portraying artistic but troubled types. Bukowski certainly was a talent, no doubt about that, and his material is sometimes played with a degree of humor.The actors may not be at their all time best, but they're still somewhat amusing to watch. Gazzara is a hoot as Serking. The very lovely young Muti is touching. Susan Tyrrell has a brief bit as a sexy (!) stranger on a bus whom Serking pursues for the purpose of sexual assault.Languidly paced and very sobering, this does feature a memorable sequence involving Muti and a safety pin, and a fairly devastating scene near the end as a character is overcome by grief.Devotees of Bukowski and the director, Marco Ferreri, will likely rate this much higher.Five out of 10.

Spectacularly sleazy, beautiful, boisterous and sexy, this is the real Bukowski deal, a booze-fueled erotic odyssey by the adventurous Ferreri with the perfectly cast Ben Gazzara as Charles Serking (Bukowski).Ornella Muti, as Serking's sexual muse, is Venus incarnate and turns in a powerhouse performance as Cass, an emotionally damaged whore with a penchant for pain. The scenes of Gazzara swaggering in and out of LA's fleapit bars, apartments and hotel rooms convey a filthy, delirious ambiance that is vividly captured by Tonino Delli Colli's superb cinematography and Dante Ferretti's exquisitely oily production design. This is such an amazing looking film with a thick, steamy, anything-goes atmosphere of lust-ridden anarchy.Much grittier than the accomplished "Barfly" and more watchable than "Love Is A Dog From Hell", the entire affair has an emotional, raw resonance that slavishly captures the Bukowski sensibility and remains consistently perverse in its singular vision of a man enslaved by alcoholic and sexual gluttony.Phillipe Sarde's score is moody and rich, as is Gazzara's breathy voice-over.A masterpiece.

While some of the sex scenes here have an undeniable raw force, calling this "a good movie" would be going too far indeed. It's stagnant in its pacing, and the female characters are conceived in a way that has no bearing on reality whatsoever. By the way, Ornella Muti is beautiful but her "performance" is very poor. (*1/2)

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.