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FThe new film by rancesco Sossai is not one that recognizes the spoilsport medical concept of “addiction”. Rather, it is a humble and gentle testimony of drunkenness, pride, sadness, and moderate nausea; to the sad prospect of old, superhuman romantic junkies drinking all day long, always wanting one last drink, and then the last drink after that in the hope that impossible happiness will come. Either that, or they hope that the drink will hasten the arrival of some wisdom that may not arrive. Incidentally, the film opens and ends with the same deadpan gag where someone, on the verge of saying goodbye, shouts out some very important life advice that is surprisingly unheard.
It’s a road movie, a romance movie and a wonderful dog tale; a coming-of-age story that embraces infancy and puberty; bitter humor without sweetness. It’s very depressing but funny at the same time. Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) and Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) are two middle-aged people who are drunk in peace all the time, they live hand to mouth, apparently on the edge of petty crime and they live in a luxury car that they bought with their part of the fraud that was already established by their friend Genio (Andrea). This involved Genio stealing glasses and mirrors made at the factory where he was employed and, together with Doriano and Carlobianchi, selling them at low prices.
We first see Genio sneaking into a retirement party at the same factory where the bosses arrive by helicopter; the scene may have been designed to commemorate Fellini, though a little Fellini-esque helicopter ride would be out of the question. The story is about an old servant named Primo Sossai, who later in the story makes a mysterious comeback. The entire film is perhaps the most famous urban legend in the director’s family.
Genio then fled the country to escape the police and is apparently on his way back Venice where Doriano and Carlobianchi hope to meet again, but a mysterious mistake means they will miss him. This is not the best view of Venice, with a brief view of the Santa Croce district and the outskirts of the world’s worst travel destination: Venice Treviso, similar to Italy’s Luton airport.
In the course of bumbling around tipsily, he met a young architecture student, Giulio (Filippo Scotti), who is poignantly and unrequitedly in love with another student – something that our two heroes were not cleverly destroyed. The whole movie Giulio reluctantly agrees to hang out with the two losers, and takes them to an architectural wonder: the postmodernist Brion cemetery near Treviso, designed by Carlo Scarpa, whose unique concrete form is a meditation on death. Is that what the characters in the film are doing at the end?
Maybe. Perhaps the point is that Doriano and Carlobianchi heal Giulio’s love pain, although it may be that his love was not as unconditional as all that. Giulio has been their true friend, their third musketeer, while Genio has shown himself to be an unsatisfactory friend. It’s a lovely movie that follows its nose, spinning around like a drunk in the afternoon.
