8½ vs The Tenant

8½

Guido's wife Luisa and his mistress Carla are romantic rivals, and they are also 2 sides of his divided self. Luisa is what he respects and can't live up to. Carla is what he desires and can't respect. Neither is complete. Together, they make up the impossible ideal woman Guido keeps trying to make films about.

The Tenant

Trelkovsky starts to become Simone Choule, the woman who lived in the flat before him. He orders her usual drink at the cafe, smokes her brand and puts on a wig and her dress. By the end he repeats her fall, so the double is what he fears he is turning into.

8½

The film opens with Guido's dream of suffocating. It ends with the director inside the film ordering all his characters to dance together. Coming full circle settles something. Guido starts out paralyzed and ends up at peace with it. The film he couldn't make becomes the film Fellini made about not being able to make it.

The Tenant

The film ends where it began. Trelkovsky lies bandaged in the same hospital bed as Simone, and the early hospital visit plays again from his point of view. He lets out the same monstrous scream she did.

8½

At any moment, what you're seeing could be Guido's memory, his fantasy, his anxiety or what is really happening. Fellini gives you no reliable signal when he moves between them. The film is about a man who can't separate his imagination from reality. It shows you that in the story, and it also makes you feel it through the way it is put together.

The Tenant

The film gives Trelkovsky visions of neighbors playing football with a human head and hieroglyphs covering the toilet walls. You cannot tell if these are real or a fever dream. The doubt is what keeps the plot unsettled.