Claudio Caligari
Amore Tossico

"Oh but what are those lights over there? The lights of the limelight, no matter how you flip, it’s always the same."

There’s an unbearable yet essential immediacy in this film. It reminds me of Stone’s "Natural Born Killers" in that escape scene where the protagonist, Mickey, after killing some people like it’s raining, says to the journalist, a young R. Downey Jr.: "You wanted the truth? HERE IT IS!" I don’t know if we wanted the truth, but with Amore Tossico... HERE IT IS!

And this is the point: in Amore Tossico reality is represented, but it’s an obscene reality because it’s not beautified and sedated, devoid of acceptance infrastructures. Nothing is filtered here; the physical barrier between the screen and the viewer that determines the illusory detachment is nullified: the punch lands straight in the face, you feel the blood in your mouth. Everything is slammed in front without reservations: "For this piece (dose) you give me the pussy, and for this gram (the 2nd dose) I want the ass, naturally."

And to think that the effectiveness of the operation is owed to the actually addict protagonists who revolutionized the original script by taking the director by the ears, who wisely took advice from the "actors", and under exhortations like: "What the fuck are you saying, that’s not how it works, this stuff you wrote doesn’t exist" he followed the street and "life" suggestions.

The atmosphere throughout the film feels like not being in a cinema: the devastation, which we hypocritically do not want to see, is slammed in front of us and we have no possibility to change path; it forces us to pass only through there. There’s not even hope of passing it off as some kind of documentary; the entertainment is brutal.

The film rolls and sucks us into an unimaginable vortex of situations that, with all the annihilation they bring, end up being coherent. Even in this world, there are unwritten rules that must be respected in a hell of endless possessions. And even the pillar of "the show must go on" is nullified because there is no continuation of any kind in this "show".

Fortunately, there’s also time for ice cream, but it’s a refreshment of the type: "We’re struggling to put together a few bucks for a hit and you’re taking the ice cream?" In one of the most grotesque scenes I’ve ever witnessed.

There’s Cesare who is a phenomenon, and through him, we understand the great deception: there was a generation of young people ready to fight against the system, mowed down by heroin circulated by those who should protect us. Emblematic is Michela’s phrase: "We’re struggling every day, ruining our lives, and we lose everything else..." And societal hypocrisy comes out when the pimp proposes to Loredana to work for him, assuring her she’ll meet lawyers, architects, professionals, those presumed pillars of society who, as always, produce meat for the slaughter for their murky satisfactions...

Not even the religious component is spared, which briefly alleviates my thirst for justice against the inquisitor and executioner clergy: that sarcastic cry for help from Pamela to the nuns, to exorcise that Catholic world that instead of helping you is always there to bury you, is resolute: "Sister, but why do I love dick so much?"

Chilling is the opening scene where in a group they walk as if to tell us: "It’s all true! We exist too, here we are."

The film necessarily aligns itself with those works that have used the cinematic medium to communicate more than the medium itself can support: Pasolini’s Salò, all of Carmelo Bene’s cinema, Ferreri’s Dillinger... Where nothing is neither told nor referred back, we proceed by observing the truth, revealed by surpassing the expressive possibilities of a limited medium like cinema. And the splatters of blood on the white canvas ridicule Fontana’s "conceptual" cuts: "This, this is a real painting. Made of life, made of death, made of blood, our blood. Right?"... lapidary Cesare.

Mixed delusions from the Toxic World:
1) A flash after the shot: "Oh my god what beautiful girls walking around."
2) A prediction: "He doesn’t realize that if they arrest him again, they’ll make a chocolate key out of him."
3) A friendly greeting: "To excellent corpse!"
4) A consideration: "In Rome, only crappy stuff is circulating."
5) Exchanges of affection: "Hey woman! Hey handsome on all wheels."
6) A desire with concern: "You like Loredana, don’t you? Like her? I’d screw her right away.
7) Vendettas: "I haven’t forgotten the rip-off."
8) The exhortation: "Give the sword, c'mon. GIVE THE SWORD!!!
9) Possibilities: "But do you want twenty or fifty?"

AND WHAT DO YOU WANT, A TWENTY OR A FIFTY???