"Filming
means watching death at work", Jean Cocteau once said. The opening
scene plays with this old cinema issue in a bizarrely comic manner: Matteo
and fat Renzo are driving home from a party, singing and still somewhat
drunk. While searching for the last joint, there is a scuffle behind the
steering wheel and the car spins off the road and somersaults. Concussed,
Matteo climbs from the car. His friend does not move. The next car to pass
by in this lonely mountainous dawn landscape stops and some figures in costumes
get out: a grim reaper, an angel and a pink panther. Looking like they have
come off the set of a Fellini film, they too have come from the party and
are friends of the lads. " He's dead", Matteo utters, terrified,
to the panther, who is really the student, Juliette. But then Fatso, who
had just been asleep, wakes up again. Later we learn that Matteo's mother,
whose husband has left her, is on her death bed, and that Juliette is expecting
a child from Andrea. He doesn't want her to have it, for fear of jeopardising
his career. Is it easy to be young? This tense, atmospheric debut film by
the Mazzieri brothers is an intelligent discourse on freedom and responsibility.
It confronts these young people on the verge of adulthood with the difficulties
of setting up their own existence, leaving the family nest and assuming
the responsibility for their own life and a new life.
2003
by Luca and Marco Mazzieri
Credits
Screenplay
Photography
Editing
Music
Art Director
Costumes
Luca
and Marco Mazzieri
Roberto Barbierato
Carlo Fontana
Martino Traversa
Francesca Magnani - Federico Cambiati
Debora Bastianelli - Donatella Cianchetti
Available
Versions
Original
Italian version with English / French subtitles
Festivals
and Awards
90
min - 35mm - 1:1.66 - Dolby Stereo SR
Technical
Data
Review
Davide
Pasti
Gallianne
Palayret
Marisa
Mantovani
and
the participation of Lina Sastri
Davide
Zaccaro