Wertmüller's signature style of playfully distorted caricature and sharp political satire found its first full expression in this delightful and wickedly funny skewering of Italian class and labor relations that earned her the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Fleeing from the mob, Sicilian laborer Mimi (Giannini) abandons his family to escape to Milan where he promptly falls in love with a hippy radical (Melato) and is pulled into the far left of a political struggle he hardly understands. Refracted through the cracked prism of Giannini's feckless Southerner, Italy's troubled North-South relations and the neverending battle of the sexes are woven into an operatic comedy about the alienation of labor in the 20th century.