Netflix series plot, review, cast, who and Adelina Tattilo iO Donna

NoThere’s nothing sordid about it Mrs. Playmen. No suburban newsstands reached with the visor lowered or newspapers with breasts on the cover stuffed inside the dailies. In the series Netflix about Adelina Tattilo – mythological character of forbidden intelligent-dirty publishing, and not only – the aesthetics are that of a Rai product. Not A ladies’ paradise but in short (the direction is by Riccardo Donna, specialized in fiction).

Cinema and streaming have been around for a while they are obsessed with the history of Italian pornoerotism in the 1970s and 1980sso vintage and innocent that it seems Disney compared to today’s web cesspool. The debut with Moanain 2009 on Sky it went badly (to be kind), as is the recent one Future Divareconstruction of the agency and the star system created by Riccardo Schicchi. Much better Supersex by Rocco Siffredi who, again on Netflix, combined exhibitionism and inner torment, reaching peaks and troughs of pleasant immorality (as well as a dutiful, due to the fame of the character, full frontal).

Mrs. Playmen on Netflix, series review. Who was Adelina Tattilo

The tone of Mrs. Playmen it is instead that of rather generic writing. With the supreme sin of making a resolute woman a single woman with children who is forced to reinvent herself from nothing as director of an erotic magazine (Playmenfounded by her husband Saro Balsamo in 1967). Nothing to say, it’s an effective coming of age.

Except that the real Adelina Tattilo (1928-2007) had already been working as an erotic publisher since ’66. From Playmen became the owner – debts included – after the divorce from Saro, forced to flee to Milan, where she transformed The hours in a progressively porno magazine (all documented in the beautiful Paper Porn by Gianni Passavini). A separation, theirs, anything but sweet. After a push and pull of my and your actions, and lovers, they came – like Mrs. Playmen puts it on stage – even with your hands.

But, precisely, seeing a woman who makes it from scratch (only with intuition and the tragic awareness of suddenly being at the top), and without knowing what “closing a newspaper” meanshas within itself more than one reason for spectacular identification. Certainly more than representing a woman who the editorial machine already knew. And that, getting rid of her husband who was also a brilliant publisher, she began to set up that issue with a Citizen Kane attitude Playmen revolutionary of the early seventies onwards. Mix of civil rights, divorce, consent and boobs, big names, various transgressions and investigations into swinging (until the creation of the giant Tattilo Edizioni).

Men – in the editorial office and outside – wanted hardcore. She, however unscrupulous (the decision to publish the stolen photos of Jackie Onassis naked moved by the right of the press), wanted the raunchy to become pop. Let her become Brigitte Bardot on the cover. An idea from Tattilo which in the first episode the series attributes to Balsamo for the above discussion, thus giving validity to female empowerment only when it corresponds to freeing oneself from the chains of the male.

An idea of ​​style is missing

The woman-wife thrown into the office and the woman-boss, Mrs. Playmen sometimes he overlaps them with pleasant results. These are the moments in which Carolina Crescentini/Adelina approaches (albeit being cautious) to the iconicity of a character who moves with the determination of Miranda Priestly (for example when superbly dismisses the photographer who leaves to Playboy because what do you want a woman to doand instead ironically regrets that the marketing director, hateful, misogynistic and pig, remains).

But compared to Priestly, Tattilo/Crescentini suffers from the lack of a convincing look. If you do a search for photos of Adelina at the height of her career, those three grainy ones found online are an intoxicating identikit of the scabrous and risqué: preference for suits, for very long strings of pearls, for platinum hair, for cigarettes one after the other. An aura fatal perfect for someone involved with pleasure in the trade of the nude to be elevated with its opposite: the interviews to Giorgio De Chirico, Allen Ginsberg, Federico Fellini.

Crescentini is blonde, but one color and the always lit cigarette do not make a biopic successful (even if inspired by). You need a strong idea of ​​style if you want to make a reconstruction that, even of the Seventies, avoid the banal use of the first available optical wallpaper (where have the legends about the furnishings of Balsamo and Tattilo’s homes and offices gone?). In line with the downward taste there are then of the unfortunate copies of Jackie Onassis and his wife, also a Pasolini (seen from afar, and thank goodness).

A moratorium on cosplaying?

However, these few moments are not enough to make Lady Adelina who fights against everyone (censorship, copyright infringement of Playboythe seizures of copies, the sealing of the editorial staff, Balm that I love you and then no and then yes) a series seriously comparable to the value of other stories on journalism and customs (of the actual newspaper, however, and except for the covers, little can be seen; however, the photos of Marchesa Casati’s parties are formidable, real or not).

Also irritating is the eternal abyss of a magazine that is about to fail at every start of an episode (“We sold 800 thousand copies but we can’t pay our salaries”; or when the last roll is shown to make it clear that there is no more paper to print the newspaper: «You see, this scroll is not enough», but come on!).

The empire of Adelina Tattilo, from Playmen to dissemination, from magazines to pink newspapers

The worst, however, is in the social portrait at the side and in the midst of everything. A look with large brushstrokes that talks about the already nuanced love story between the photographer Luigi Poggi (Giuseppe Maggio) and the editor-in-chief then director Chartroux (Filippo Nigro)former Decima MAS, he even becomes a bigot. In the seventies of free love, two professionals who work in an erotic newspaper give each other only kisses, no scenes in bed (right in the series of a woman who in the nineties created Adam, glossy gay magazine in direct competition with the social center tone and paper of Babylon).

Then there is a former confessor priest of Adelina’s youth, Don Rocco (Giampiero Judica), to whom the publisher goes to find comfort. Certainly introduced as a connecting element with the biography of Tattilo, a girl who grew up in a Catholic family and was then educated by nuns.

Finally, leaving aside the son who risks becoming a bomber at the urging of a girl who is the daughter of a feminist who is mad at Adelina’s pro-ressist nude, much of the space in the series is occupied by Elsa (Francesca Coluccisame as Elodie). Alternatively, an unfortunate woman of Pasolini extraction (she lives in the Roman village of Mandrione) and an ancestor of Andrea Sachs (again the Devil wears clothes etc.).

Elsa, a small-town girl, from rape to assistant number 1

Photographed naked by Poggi as a joke, Elsa ends up on the cover of Playmen after signing the publication permit without carefully reading it. It follows that one of Mandrione – since she is naked gives authorization to commit violence – unfortunately he rapes her. While she would like to report him, the family insists that she marry him: Elsa reports it. The policeman who collects the testimony, having put together the picture, invites the girl to accept the position as assistant to Playmen that Adelina offered her as an absurd reparation: he will thus be able to take revenge on the magazine and all the editors by spying.

Instead Elsa flourishes, finds solutions to causes that are impossible even for lawyers, covers for Adelina over the photos of Jackie Onassis and finally falls in love with the cop. Full mass melodrama, which is something that as a country we knew how to handle with more ingenuity. A rudeness that now belongs to everyone. In Jay Kelly, next film with George Clooney set three quarters in Italy, a train journey from Paris to Florence is still done with the Settebello, decommissioned in 1992. Right because overtourism has also arrived at the cinema.

The fact remains that Adelina Tattilo still deserves an adequate portrait, although the latest style comparison between her and Saro – in Dynasty style and obviously on a terrace with risk of falling – it makes you forget the rest of the previous episodes a bit. Perhaps.

Mrs. Playmenthe plot of the series

Saro Balsamo, first Italian publisher of erotic magazines and then porn, he runs away on the advice of lawyers, too many illicit operations to safeguard the publishing house. He does it after the huge party at Piper for the launch of the issue Playmen with Brigitte Bardot. His wife, Adelina Tattilo, owner of most of the company shares, he therefore puts himself in charge of the magazine.

The hostile editorial team tries to oust her by deciding independently, or by following Balsamo’s line. A tug of war that goes on number by number, until the success of the more social erotic formula convinces them. In the meantime, Balsamo shows up, he is in France, and reluctantly recognizes his wife’s successes, who is instead thinking about divorce between lawsuits, seizures and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy which sues the magazine for copyright infringement (Playmen was clearly inspired by it, surpassing it).

When Saro finally returns to Italy, it turns out he still owns the whole place. But not all is lost, someone in fact reveals essential information to Adelina that could turn the situation around.

The cast

Carolina Crescentini (Adelina Tattilo) obviously stands out in the cast. We are at his side Filippo Nigro (Chartroux), Giuseppe Maggio (Luigi Poggi), Francesca Colucci (Elsa), Domenico Diele (Andrea De Cesari). Francesco Colella is Saro Balsamo, then there is Lidia Vitale in the role of Playmen’s secretary, Lella. Giampiero Judica is Don Rocco.