A very poor Italian comedy, based around a cop investigating the murder of a sleazy old architect. THE SUNDAY WOMAN is a perfect example of style over substance: there's always plenty going on, lots of characters and dialogue, Jacqueline Bisset looking photogenic, and a fine Ennio Morricone score. But there the good elements end. The story is beleagured and drawn out endlessly, the mystery anything but intriguing, and the whole thing comes across as very silly - especially the murder weapon! A giallo this isn't, despite being advertised as such in some quarters. It's more of a satire on Italian social conventions, so might have been of interest to local viewers at the time, but certainly not these days.

"The police have the victim, the weapon and the suspect. What they don't have is the Sunday Woman." You know that a movie is high class when Marcello Mastroianni plays the investigator and it's based on a book that's listed as one of the first examples of modern Italian crime novels.

Commissioner Santamaria (Mastroianni) is on the case of Garrone, an architect who was playing an intellectual game of murder within a series of letters to his friend Massimo Campi (Jean-Louis Trintignant). While investigating, Satanamaria falls for one of the suspects, Anna Carla Dosio. Can we blame him when she's played by Jacqueline Bisset?

It seems that Garrone has been killed for his blackmailing, but now that Campi's boyfriend Lello has also been killed - amongst others - the plot is thickening.

Luigi Comencini is usually the director of more high brow things than we cover here. But hey - there's a Morricone soundtrack to tether us to the tenuous connections to the giallo genre that we hold so dear. I guess I shouldn't say too high brow, as after all the main victim is murdered with a stone penis, so there's that.

La "Donna della domenica" is definitely one of my favorite books and a great movie. Despite being built on a murder story, this movie is not a thriller. In fact, it is rather a comedy on the Torinese society, spanning from wanna-be-intellectuals to the rich and the beautiful, from rustic land owners to simple immigrants. And as a comedy, it is an exceptional one!

If you are looking for suspense or you are not familiar with Italian society, you should stay away from it. Also, I recommend that you need to understand Italian very well to appreciate this movie: I checked a bit the German version/subtitles, but at least 50% of the humor gets lost in the translation...