Alessandro Paris, Sibylle Righetti
Questa storia qua

A sincere and poetic docu-film where we find an early-version "Vasco" animated by laudable youthful impulses and full of good intentions.

A montage film, where a narrating Vasco tells us about his childhood and makes us relive village festivals, his first experiences with music, and the arrival in Zocca (a small village lost in the Modena mountains, almost co-protagonist of the entire film) of the first independent radio. A poetic and at times moving portrayal, with direct interviews with all those who knew the young Vasco well, mischievous and already a ladies' man, starting with his mother Novella Rossi to hear the voices of his childhood friends to whom he still seems very attached (or so they say...).

The Vasco of "Ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone", debut album of 1978 up to the extraordinary Sanremo success of "Vita Spericolata". Certainly, this was A DIFFERENT Vasco... the early Vasco, with his load of sincere rebellion, a bit naive and offbeat for the standards of the time. Not this old hyper-pumped billionaire, full of himself, who we hear singing today, in 2014, posturing like a Pope and followed by thousands of sheep-fans ready to swallow increasingly banal and predictable words, spiced with "here... and there... ehhh...".

A film, if we want, "very fawning" that paints us a more naive and sincere singer-songwriter/rocker than what he really must be, behind the scenes and away from the media spotlight. However, a "sincere" film on the part of the two young debut directors who found themselves editing a bunch of more or less unreleased material that gives us back a "different" Vasco Rossi: definitely more genuine and real.

The Vasco I also discovered in 1979 when I first listened to "Susanna è una bambina tutta colorata" and was struck by this "different" voice, unpretentious, unrefined, and very spontaneous. A first love that lasted a few years only to abandon him right after the success of Vita Spericolata...

I watched it gladly, like looking at an old album of photographs yellowed with time. Just to remind us how time ages everything and everyone. And when we age, alas, we all become more cynical, nasty, opportunistic, and "sly": exactly like today's Vasco.