Mrs Playmen
ミセス・プレイメン
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Rome in the 1970s: when her husband flees to avoid arrest, Adelina Tattilo takes over Playmen, the erotic magazine they founded together, and changes what it is for.
Rome in the 1970s. Adelina Tattilo, a practising Catholic and a mother, runs Playmen, Italy's first erotic magazine, with her husband and co-founder, Saro Balsamo. When Saro vanishes to escape charges of embezzlement, the police seize the new issue and arrest Adelina, the editor on paper, in his place. Out on bail, she finds the company deep in debt and its editor, Mario Chartroux, doubtful of her. She takes charge anyway.
She changes what the magazine is for. Beside the nudes she runs a piece for brides and wives who have never been told about their own pleasure, the diary of a murdered marchesa, a debate on divorce, still illegal when the story begins. An ambitious photographer, Luigi Poggi, secretly Chartroux's lover, gets nude pictures of a young woman, Elsa, into print by hiding from her what she was signing. Soon afterwards a man she knows rapes her, and her family presses her to marry him. Adelina gives her a job as her assistant. Andrea De Cesari, a vice-squad inspector set on closing Playmen down, recruits Elsa as his informant and slowly falls for her.
Playboy arrives in Italy, poaches a photographer, offers to buy Playmen and sues it for copying its name. Adelina answers with nude photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which sell out, files to divorce Saro and begins an affair with Steve, a gigolo who posed for her cover. When a mob attacks the customers of a gay bar, Chartroux runs, leaving Poggi to help their friends.
In the last episode an Italian court rules for Playmen, after Elsa and Chartroux show that Playboy's own name was borrowed. The same day De Cesari is badly hurt trying to stop a dangerous young man whom Adelina's son Lorenzo and his girlfriend had gone to meet. Saro comes home, the warrant lifted, claims the magazine as its majority owner, fires Elsa and, when Adelina asks to buy him out, beats her. Chartroux quits; Poggi is arrested selling compromising photographs of a minister. Then Adelina learns that Saro married his lover while still married to her, and threatens to expose him. He sells. The series ends with Elsa back at her desk, De Cesari awake in hospital with Elsa beside him, and Adelina at the head of Playmen, putting together an issue on the contraceptive pill.
Starring
Carolina Crescentinias Adelina Tattilo
A Catholic wife and mother left to run her husband's debt-ridden erotic magazine after he flees, who makes it her own.
Adelina Tattilo’s story
Adelina has built Playmen with her husband, Saro. When he flees to France with a former lover to escape arrest, she is left with the debts, the police and a staff who doubt her. She lets her household staff go, sells her cars and takes the magazine in hand: she writes a story for brides herself, hires Elsa, fires Chartroux for secretly helping Saro and takes him back. She stakes everything on nude photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, files for divorce and takes a lover, Steve. When Saro returns to claim Playmen and beats her for asking to buy him out, she finds he has married his mistress without divorcing her, confronts him on the rooftop where it all began and makes him sell. She ends at the head of the magazine, planning an issue on the pill.
Filippo Nigroas Mario Chartroux
The magazine's editor, wary of Adelina at first, who hides his relationship with a younger man.
Mario Chartroux’s story
Chartroux goes on quietly helping Saro behind Adelina's back until Elsa sees them together and Adelina fires him; he gives up the key to Saro's slush fund and is taken back. He turns cold on his secret lover, the photographer Luigi Poggi, for deceiving Elsa, then asks him to be a couple, and finds the hidden record that gets the prostitution case against the magazine dropped. When a mob attacks a gay bar, he runs and leaves Poggi behind. With Elsa he wins the case against Playboy, then quits when Saro takes over. Asked by Poggi to go to America with him, he instead helps a contact who wants Poggi's photographs of a minister to reach him. Poggi is arrested at the handover, which was not the deal, and Chartroux is left running after the police car.
Giuseppe Maggioas Luigi Poggi
An ambitious photographer who will do anything to get ahead, and Chartroux's secret lover.
Francesca Coluccias Elsa
A young working-class woman whose nude photos are published without her real consent, and who becomes Adelina's assistant.
Elsa’s story
Turned away at the door of a Playmen party, Elsa is brought in by Adelina and spends the night with the photographer Luigi Poggi, who asks her to pose naked for the two of them, then gets her signature by hiding that the pictures will be published. Then a man she knows rapes her. The police ask her humiliating questions, his lawyer proposes marriage as the way out, and when she refuses, her father disowns her. She becomes Adelina's assistant and the informant of De Cesari, a vice-squad inspector, but grows loyal to Adelina, refuses to give him a false statement and finds the article that wins the case against Playboy. Saro fires her, and her case against the man goes badly. When De Cesari wakes in hospital she is beside him, kisses him, and returns to her desk.
Domenico Dieleas Andrea De Cesari
A vice-squad inspector determined to shut the magazine down, who uses Elsa as an informant and falls for her.
Francesco Colellaas Saro Balsamo
Adelina's husband and the magazine's co-founder, who flees his debts and returns to take it back.
Why it matters
Mrs Playmen asks who gets to speak for women's desire, and it does not pretend the answer is simple. Its heroine publishes nudes for a living and is also a practising Catholic who wants wives to hear about pleasure, divorce and the contraceptive pill, at a time when divorce was still illegal in Italy. The real Adelina Tattilo, whom Time called the Hugh Hefner of Italy in 1971, told the magazine that in her idea of eroticism the woman was as much the subject as the man. The series puts that claim under strain inside its own story: Elsa's body is published without her real consent, and the man who rapes her is offered a way out if she will marry him. Around the magazine stand the other forces of the time, a vice squad, the Church, an editor who must hide whom he loves, and a husband whose legal title outweighs his wife's work.