Vincere
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 2.0
It's really a Battered Woman Movie. Benito Mussolini's one-time lover Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is romanced by Il Duce, impregnated and then tossed aside: when she tries to force the Lame Dictator to accept the child as his own, he throws her and their child into an asylum and has the records of their existence wiped completely. Doesn't say much about Mussolini's Reign except that he was a cruel buffoon - which is certainly no mystery to anyone aware of history - and even though Filippo Timi's comical portrait of the man in the first half is a tad much, when the movie makes the shift to Ida's crazy-eyed perspective it becomes completely tedious (she weeps and weeps, and no one cares to listen except for the nuns, who are helpless themselves). The title translates to "Win," but everyone loses.
