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Hello everyone, before the Easter holidays, I thought it appropriate to delight you with an examination of our "minor" cinema, which perhaps I have abandoned in its authentic vocation in recent times: so here I am to talk, with you and for you (as always), about "Sposerò Simon LeBon" ('85), by the unknown Carlo Cotti.
This is an interesting minor film from various and useful perspectives.
Firstly, it allows us to talk about the "Duran Duran fever," a malady that in nineteen eighty-four - indifferent to Orwell's predictions - took hold of many girls, much like the "Villeneuve fever" had afflicted brothers and boyfriends before extinguishing at Zolder in May of two years prior.
Now close your eyes and think of all the professionals, intellectuals, or whatever you want to call them, who today participate in VeDrò meetings and/or defend prominent defendants in mafia-related cases, sit at the helm of industries, trade associations, professional orders: well, in their youth, very likely, they had a slicked-back hairstyle, teased bangs or the crimped hair of Clizia and the friends who star in this film, and they were crazy about the Anglo-Saxon pop of "Simone il bono" and his friends (though I have a fondness for Warren Cuccurullo), which says a lot about what one of my intellectual references, Camilla Baresani, calls "contemporary Italian types" and their evolution.
Secondly, this little film is indicative, on a technical cinematographic level, of the charming trend of replacing the '60s and early '70s musicarelli with a sort of "instant movie" genre, where the craziness of fans for a musical idol is portrayed (they made a similar one about Vasco) in the new socio-urban contexts.
In adherence to the instant book from which the film is adapted, a semi-biographical work by Clizia Gurrado, it’s interesting to see the derivations of the average Duran fanatic in the Milan of the '80s, light and bubbly like the spritz of certain squares in northern Italy, on one side trying to escape its past and its victims from the '60s-'70s (from Piazza Fontana to Sergio Ramelli), on another side unaware of the political, economic, and moral collapse of the early '90s and the subsequent fifteen years that led us to the magical dawn of our 2008. In short, the historical value of the film is useful for those who were born or were infants at the time.
Thirdly, behind an anonymous direction and a classic adolescent story reminiscent of the lesson given by "La Boum" ('81) by the Marceau-Cosso duo, it is interesting to capture the faces, just fresh from youthful acne, of the protagonists and supporting actors of the film, "relatives of" later destined to honorable careers: from the young Gianmarco Tognazzi (unaware of future baldness), to the various Federica Izzo (better known as Giuppy and an esteemed voice actress) and Luca Lionello (also an actor and voice actor). The career of the protagonist Barbara Blanc is more anonymous, who, according to imdb, even acted in "Don Matteo," as well, a symbolic link between the past and present of our cinema and our country.
Obviously, this film, written and directed for the young audience at the time into loafers and Timberlands, is consumed almost like a burger left in the freezer for twenty years, but this does not detract from the fact that, at least for the archaeological and sociological purposes mentioned, its viewing offers the occasion to practice the art of retro modernism. And to understand the roots of today's splendid forty-year-olds, or at least a non-negligible part of them.
Meanwhile, happy Easter to all!!
Yours feverishly
Il_Paolo
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