Psychological drama of the compelling relationship between a young French engineer and the girl he takes into his home after his wife has left him with their baby son. –BFI
An agent for a liqueur company, he became involved in the cinema by making short advertising films; later he worked in the production sector and finally in the sale of cinema equipment, moving to Spain. There he met the young humorist Rafael Azcona, with whom he set up an extraordinary, lasting working relationship: the first fruits of their partnership were “El pisito” (1958), “Los chicos” (1959) and “The Little Coach (El cochecito)” (1960), the three “Spanish comedies” marked by a corrosive anti-bourgeois sarcasm. On returning to Italy, Ferreri continued his Spanish theme with “Queen Bee (L’ape regina)” (1963), an anti-Catholic satire in which the institution of matrimony is so fiercely under fire as to unleash the ire of the censor (requiring various cuts in the film and a slight change to the title). He fared no better with “The Ape Woman (La donna scimmia)” (1964), a bitter and lucid parable on the relationships between the sexes, dominated by the exploitation of the weaker sex… read more
it took me a while to grasp what was it about this movie that bugged me but i figured it out eventually! the vast majority of the film takes place in the living room, bed, kitchen and hallway and Ferreri creates an aura about those spaces that makes it feel like it's prison.along with the couple's infighting and oafish lovemaking you can't help but want to escape outside.
