“Dangerously sexy” is probably not the first description that comes to mind when you think of Benito Mussolini. But then you haven’t seen Vincere, a new Italian film about Ida Dalser, a real-life woman who may have been Mussolini’s wife and certainly bore him a son. The Mussolini who seduces her behind a pillar during a political riot is not the stout, bald man of history books. Some of the credit for that goes to the actor, Filippo Timi, who plays him in this admittedly fictionalized biopic. He’s an attractive, high-minded, although frighteningly ambitious (he’s aiming higher than Napoleon, he tells Ida) socialist revolutionary when he sweeps her off her feet. When she gets pregnant Mussolini isn’t exactly the most excited prospective father you’ve ever seen. His response is something along the lines of “Baptisms are better than funerals.” But still their relationship seems relatively happy, until it is complicated by another woman and child, who appear to be Mussolini’s official family. What order these relationships began in is never made clear in the film. The order in which Mussolini values them becomes upsettingly apparent, however. Of course, his other wife could be perfectly nice, but since she’s shown only in passing, there’s no doubt that the moviegoer’s sympathy will lie with Ida. We watch with her as Mussolini changes from the sexy young pol who seduced us at the start to the crazy dictator of World War II. In the film, that change is literal. The older Mussolini is played by the real guy, using news reel footage. The technique serves to make the audience all the more sympathetic to Ida. The charismatic man who was part of your life just a few minutes ago has been reduced to a lunatic yelling in black and white. At the start of the film, I wasn’t so keen on the news reels. They place the film in a historical context, but the bombastic music and melodramatic portrayals of Europe during World War I felt a little excessive. But excess seems to be a way of life for this pair. Mussolini shuns Ida to a dramatic degree (he’s a man who could have used a lesson on the value of a polite, clear break-up conversation), and she pursues him with a fervor that could be considered insane—and not only by the Fascists running Italian mental institutions at the time. Neither is he a great role model for their son. If it’s hard to be the dismissed lover of the dictator, it’s even worse to be his unacknowledged son. You see your dad only in news reels and marble busts and connect with him mainly by mocking imitations for your friends. In an unusual bit of casting, the actor who plays the young Mussolini also plays the older version of Mussolini’s son. But then, Italian sons always have it hard. Or at least that’s what the protagonist of Mid- August Lunch (Pranzo diFerragosto) would tell you. Also a recent Italian film, Lunch tells a much lighter story of Italian families. Gianni is a middle-aged man who lives with his elderly mother. His primary activities consist of cooking her dinner and drinking wine on the sidewalk. Noticing that Gianni’s relatively inoccupied, his landlord and then his doctor prevail upon him to watch their mothers on August 15, the start of the Italian summer holiday. Short on cash and excuses, Gianni and his mother eventually consent to adding three elderly women temporarily to their household. The sort of wackiness that one expects of old ladies and Italian comedies ensues. There’s a lot of entertaining cooking, drinking and arguing. It’s not the sort of movie that will stick with you forever or cause you to ponder great historical questions (which woman did Mussolini marry first?). But I found it to be good summer fun and an interesting lesson in the potential upsides of filling your house with crazy old Italian ladies. Hint: they often come with a supply of 100-euro bills. To be fair I should mention that the old ladies who were in the theater with me were not so impressed; perhaps affectionate mocking of your own generation is less amusing.