For his first film in colour, Fellini cast his wife and frequent star Masina as a nearly middle-aged woman who believes her husband (Pisu) is unfaithful and fantasises about a bizarre, pop-art other life which he might be leading. Masina is an interesting central figure, twisted by her fantasies (happy and frightening) about her ordinary marriage and hung up on memories of odd childhood incidents (a characteristic Fellini touch is her neurosis about being burned as a martyr while taking part in a religious school pageant).
There are strange interludes as Juliet wanders next door to hang out with a neighbour who lives an impossibly glamorous and faintly ridiculous Bond girl lifestyle, and the drabber aspects of the heroine’s life are illuminated by exhilarating flashes of the fantastic.