Film

Tales of Ordinary Madness

Name: Tales of Ordinary Madness
Genre: Drama
Released: 1981
Cast: Ben Gazzara, Ornella Muti, Susan Tyrrell, Tanya Lopert, Roy Brocksmith

Drama
Very dark

Ferreri's savage 1981 portrait of a poet drowning in Los Angeles depravity. Ben Gazzara stumbles through a fever dream of bars, strangers, and self-destruction with unflinching brutality. Formally audacious and deeply uncomfortable, it's a film that doesn't flinch from its own ugliness—for better and worse. For viewers who want cinema that wounds.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy rough, funny character studies of a self-destructive drifter whose appetites are the whole point, told with a poet's eye for the squalid.

Skip it if the drinking and sex are relentless and the story circles rather than climbs, so if you need warmth or a clear arc, it will grind you down.

What it asks of you: Just over an hour and forty minutes of unhurried, shambling episodes, light on plot and heavy on mood; you have to let the seediness accumulate patiently.

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