Jacques Demy
Lady Oscar

All right, whatever you want. This film is not a masterpiece, it will not go down in history, no one will remember it anymore. Well, so be it, no worries. Don't ask me who Barry Stokes is because I wouldn't know what to tell you. At most, I can tell you a little more about Jacques Demy, the director, but not much. The point is different: watching this film again makes me cry. It's a film from 1979, and I wasn't around yet, but I remember Lady Oscar on TV well, as a good child of the Eighties. And I get emotional; a tear wells up. Because I think of a time, not too long ago, now vanished. Or maybe I remember childhood, and I miss so many things that you can't even imagine.

I miss the days spent at kindergarten or school and the mad rush home to watch cartoons, I miss the puppy Denver, Johnny's almost magic, little white Sibert, and Alfred the duck; "Pranzo è Servito" and Saturdays watching "Sabato al circo"; I miss the summer with my grandmother and the afternoons in the park playing on the swing; the vacations with my parents running on the beach; the embarrassment when questioned at school and never remembering the multiplication tables; the educational game Sapientino that we all had and which we'd spend hours and hours on; the Ninja Turtles and Roger Rabbit; the spring walks holding onto dad's hand; the first video games which compared to today’s were colossal duds but we had fun anyway; "Drive In" and "Indietro Tutta"; Duran Duran and Kiss Me Licia; the more mellow Mulino Bianco; the summer oratory, or the camp, which saying it today seems almost scary, but back then we had fun, and a lot; a Rome that never existed so big: Tancredi, Di Bartolomei, Nela, Giannini, Conti, Falcao, Pruzzo and the Juventus robbery (they were already there) on Turone's famous goal.

Today everyone has everything, kids are born with a cell phone and a computer. Back then, if you had a VCR, they compared you to Agnelli. It's just that today's kids don't know how to pass the time, but we did. And of course, today, with a job that beats you down from Monday to Friday, the change of city, and many other nice little things, longing for those times, forgive me, but it's not a crime. And so, even a small, perhaps useless, film like this one puts you in a melancholy that is hard to shake off for a while. One of those bursts of nostalgia that you don't know if they serve to live better or to make you angry for what you are now.