So this is another movie about movies. Its protagonist is a successful director who’s making a new movie, but (despite having had an expensive rocket ship set constructed) has no idea what it’s about. He’s at a spa for his health, but is fending off anxious producers and actresses, plus also his mistress and wife, both of whom have come to visit him at the same time to no small amount of anger and conflict.

It’s a very meta movie, one that lampshades its own attributes as people talk about the movie within the movie. But it’s also rather sly, because as it’s telling you about this director who has no idea what his movie is and just has disconnected vignettes, it’s making you think that’s also what you’re watching — a flailing, avant-garde movie that doesn’t really hang together. But it’s not; this is actually a very well-constructed movie that interweaves its “real” scenes with its fantasy scenes to paint a compelling portrait of its characters.

(And it probably goes without saying that the cinematography is excellent. This is a very visual movie. Also, movie Italians in 1963 are stylish af.)

Really, the biggest flaw to the movie is that at its core it’s yet another Midlife Crisis Dude movie, and the women in it exist only in their relation to the main dude — one of the fantasy scenes is the director imagining a “harem” of all the women he’s ever wanted to bang, and if the movie undercuts his dream by having that turn into a revolt, it doesn’t exactly give the women any independent existence. They might hate the protagonist or love him (or both), but they’re all really about him in one way or another.

But if that subject matter isn’t particularly compelling, it’s executed well, so this is one of the movies that falls on the “enjoyable” side of the enjoyable/educational divide for me.