Juliet of the Spirits (1965) 3.5/4

To a certain extent, I GET this film. No one's more surprised by that fact than me. At one point I was pretty sure it would be nothing but a series of convoluted imagery understood by no one but Federico Fellini himself.
The movie starts out with a housewife scurrying to prepare for her husband's return from work as it is their anniversary. Instead of showing up to the door with flowers, he arrives with what looks like the cast from "La Dolce Vita", having forgotten about their anniversary and proceeds to turn their house into a tavern. In the 1930's, this would be the opening act of a screwball comedy about divorce (minus the seance of course) but in this movie, we see something else. This scene shows us just how painfully submissive this house wife, Giullietta, is. She smiles and joins in everyone else's fun.
After major evidence of infidelity, she is convinced her husband has been cheating on her. She enlists help from several sources, including a group or Jungian private eyes who show her vivid photos, videos, and audio conversations of her husband and his mistress while telling her that they aren't responsible for how the evidence is interpreted and that she should keep an open, unbiased mind. Whether it's a sex-fiend fortune teller or her filthy rich neighbor with a waterslide in her bedroom "to be used after making love", everyone's advice is horrible. She finally looks inward, and discovers that her freedom from her skewed, ideological views on marriage and religion is found in escaping her willingness to believe unquestioningly everything she is told.
Now that's the part I GET. There are a lot of visions and dreams Fellini used from his own life (as usual) that left me confused. But who wants to watch a Fellini film without those elements? That's what makes him Fellini. How disappointing it would be to sit down and watch this or 8 1/2 or other Fellini dreamscapes and understand everything. Overall, I found this to be a great effort in mixing various marital ideals with abstract imagery. A very entertaining film.