Eugenio I love you
Film
The Italian leg
by Helene Wong
THREE MEN AND A LEG
Directed by Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo; PG
Contains low level violence
ITALIAN FILM FESTIVAL
The comedy hit of last year's Italian Film Festival returns on general release as a warm-up for this year’s (which contains two more productions from the same knockabout trio). Here, the wild and crazy guys turn their good-natured brand of antic visual comedy loose on a road movie. Aldo and Giovanni, married to the boss’s daughters, are travelling south with Giacomo for his wedding to the third daughter. With them is “The Leg”, an expensive wooden sculpture that looks suspiciously like a prosthesis. They’re joined by a girl (Marina Massironi). Adventures unfold, emotions are stirred, delays ensue – raising the temperature of their irascible father-in-law. By the time they arrive, life looks different from when they set off.
An ode to mateship and the romance of summer on the road, Three Men and a Leg pulls out gag after gag while just managing to keep hold of the thread of the story. The comedy ranges across deadpan slapstick to cheeky allusions to other film genres, throws in unexpected moments of poignancy, and delivers – via a very seasoned and talented team – an uninhibited good night out.
In the festival’s Ask Me If I’m Happy, the guys are on the road again, sort of – but with great reluctance. Having fallen out three years before, Giovanni and Giacomo have been induced by Marina to visit a dying Aldo. On the way, flashbacks reveal the reason for the estrangement, and by the time they arrive at Aldo’s we anticipate some kind of resolution. We get it, with all the surprise and complication that seem to be this trio’s trademark.
Things are even more complicated in their latest, the imaginatively titled The Legend of Al, John and Jack. Perhaps pioneering a new genre – the spaghetti Mafia film – it cutely has the Italians playing at being American mobsters in 1959 New York. Naturally, they’re inept. Having bungled an assignment to rub out Frankie Rubber Butt, they have to pull out the stops to escape the Boss’s wrath. It’s another plot of flashbacks and unexpected turns, much easier to watch than describe. You really have to be there. A little long in parts, but it does have a swinging soundtrack.
In Eugenio I Love You, the soundtrack doesn’t swing so much as intrude, but it’s a small flaw in a rather touching treatment of disability. Eugenio is a bachelor at the wrong end of middle age, with Down’s Syndrome. Although alone, he is quietly revealed to be as important a part of his village as everyone else. The arrival of a young accident victim at the hospital he volunteers in, and the resulting confrontation with his past – though structurally a little awkward in the telling – gives insight into the bittersweet reality of his life. If the ending chooses sentiment over credibility, the film on the whole is not sentimental. And its strongest drawcard is the casting of veteran Giancarlo Giannini: barely recognisable, he gives an extraordinarily brave, tender and believable performance as Eugenio.
In Light of My Eyes, a difficult love story, Luigi Lo Cascio plays Antonio, a sweet-faced, mild-mannered chauffeur for the wealthy. A sci-fi buff, he imagines himself, in ironic voice-over, to be on a mission to Earth, which cleverly conveys his feeling of being a stranger in his own world. Into his life comes Maria (Sandra Ceccarelli, in a performance as appropriately frozen as the food in her shop), a solo mother whose lonely life and secrets he gradually penetrates. Despite the urban, enclosed shooting style, a lyricism emerges from the way they slowly learn to connect and trust each other.
Auckland: Oct 8-22; Wellington: Oct 22-Nov 5; Christchurch: Oct 29-Nov 12; Dunedin: Nov 12-19; Nelson: Nov 19-26; Napier: Nov 26-Dec 3.
