Gennaro Nunziante
Quo vado?

The film begins with two guys, a white guy—Checco Zalone—and an unlucky black driver. Suddenly, they find themselves facing a tribe of savages, or rather, locals. At this point, since the situation becomes worrisome for their behinds, Checco Zalone seats himself on a providential wooden stump and begins to narrate. Narrate narrate, the film moves towards a philanthropically correct finale, just to paraphrase the ubiquitous ‘politically correct’. What is there between the beginning of Zalone's story and the tear-jerking pre-finale with an ending (anything can happen) at risk of complaint from animal rights activists? It's quickly said: in between is the misadventure of an employee.

Obviously, if anyone wants to know the plot in detail, there are other web avenues for getting informed. In this instance, it's interesting to reflect on the characters and themes that inhabit this film. Meanwhile, Checco Zalone, in the world known as Luca Pasquale Medici. If you are accustomed to visiting Apulia, you know that in every small village of this beautiful region of the former Magna Graecia, there is a Checco Zalone. Obviously, this does not take anything away from the actor: luck, among the multitude of various ‘similcheccozalone’, chose him and pulled him out of anonymity. Good for him. The problem instead arises with the success that the public is awarding to “Quo vado?”.

In short, what's there to laugh about concerning the topic of the ‘permanent job’?

I don't have a permanent job and couldn't live with people who count the years left until retirement, severance pay, or the annoying boss. That said, if a permanent job were a solution that the State could handle, why not? Given that—shame on you, hypocrites!—those who have been proposing eliminating it for some time are precisely those who have that damned permanent job! Politicians and the like. Okay, there are employees who don't want to do anything: the law of large numbers always predicts some bad apples. And then? Better the Apulian ‘caporalato’ that treats workers like beasts? Better the accountants in civil Apulia who pay 300 euros a month to bookkeepers? Better to consider those without a working will as part of physiological events, I say. Or does someone want to execute them? If so, come forward and do it yourself. Or maybe, let's reeducate them, which is better for everyone. Those who want to execute them and those allergic to work.

The laughing Italians, hidden in the darkness of theaters—north and south—remind me of those idiots who, in the authoritative words of Umberto Eco, infest the web hidden under a nickname: under that umbrella, they write superficial judgments and nonsense on everything, books, films, music. Those people laughing in theaters don't understand they themselves are the protagonists who make people laugh: you should leave the theater afflicted by how you are treated by Power that—it is Power that allows you to think the ‘others’ are the protagonists to make fun of in films—wins once again.

Alright, let's wrap up. Yesterday, on Virus hosted by Porro, Giulio Base, Lino Banfi, and a Vanzina brother collectively lifted Checco Zalone into the empyrean of the greats of all-time cinema. Embarrassing, damn it! And they are not the only ones. Not for Checco Zalone who is very likable, but for the elite who have always preached high culture. Anyway, “Quo vado?” is a comically sad film.