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Rating: Ring a ring o' roses...
Walter (masterfully played by Valerio Mastandrea) is a disillusioned outsider towards life, with no career goals, unsuccessful with women (here portrayed as insensitive beings ready to do anything to appear), without ideals, practically emptied by the usual morning routine that sees hordes of double-breasted sharks with briefcases, ready to screw you over even for four hundred euros a month. This is not a film for everyone, desperate yet at the same time tragicomic, which tells small snippets of daily life in an apathetic and gray Turin, beyond good and evil, where those who live are searching for something they know they cannot reach, even if subconsciously. And this is the big difference between the story of the protagonist and those of other supporting characters; he knows he can't achieve what others are seeking, and so he ideologically removes himself from the pack before someone more cunning than him can outmaneuver him, kicking his illusions and hopes.
In reality, the stories told in this feature film unfold without logical thread, except for the alienating and chaotic flow of suburban life in places where it is hard to emerge if you are not convinced of your potentials and aware of self-confidence and trust in others: universities, discos, workplaces, particularly overcrowded clothing stores, bookstores, and malls, where the gray sticks to you as if it were your shadow, here the young Walter tries to find his identity, in the constant search for bipeds with whom to exchange opinions, looking for peers who experience his same fears, insecurities, post-adolescent disillusions. Walter still lives with his father (a former Fiat worker, now retired, who would like a son in a double-breasted suit with a briefcase, just like the people Walter mocks and ridicules) and his mother (who has fallen into a nervous breakdown for several years, not talking to anyone, not even her son). The only person Walter blindly believes in, with whom he can speak and confess openly without fears is Aunt Carolina (played by the reassuring and caring Caterina Caselli) who helps him in moments of despair and with whom he has great affinities, but just out of spite, will become a victim of a car accident when the Daihatsu Feroza of a rich kid cuts her off, not even offering the minimum assistance.
Walter enrolls in university without managing to take any exams, will do civilian service for several months at C.A.N.E. where he will have to comply with the orders of Lupo (Sergio Troiani), a boss obsessed with order who will attempt to climb to power through bizarre propaganda and initiatives to integrate gypsies and immigrants into the social fabric, and where he will meet Pasquale, a young man married to a wealthy woman he doesn't love, just to live off her wealth indefinitely. Other characters include Benedetta Mazzini who plays Valeria, a girl who bases her entire existence on appearance, perpetually high and homeless, Gianluca Gobbi alias the poet-philosopher Alessandro Castracan, Roberto Accorneri is the vicious professor Treppì, “Lurido” played by Tommaso Ragno, a drug dealer dating Valeria, Wladimir Luxuria in the role of a lady of the night “intimate” friend of Walter’s father, and Luciana Litizzetto in the role of the municipal employee.
The soundtrack is spot on with tracks from CCCP/CSI, Marlene Kuntz, Il Santo Niente, Ustmamò, and others that perfectly fit the atmosphere that is both fatalistic and anticonformist, running from the beginning to the end of the film's story, based on the homonymous book by Giuseppe Culicchia.
A film that is engaging, sarcastic, bitter, nonsense, it opens your eyes to reality, makes you cry and laugh at everything and everyone at the same time, romantic and realistic at the same time... a film that tells all the self-important superhumanoids who feel like a big deal to go to hell, just as my alter ego Walter derides and mocks them... I allow myself in final synthesis this quote:
“Turin October 13, 1996, 4:45 pm solar eclipse: the world stops; 4:55 pm: the world starts spinning again... what a drag!”
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