Federico Moccia
Scusa ma ti chiamo amore

The last, hopefully, drama in Moccia's trilogy, clearly synthesizes even more than the previous book-films, the moral world and existential concepts of the poet-director in question. If in previous works, the author's gaze had analyzed, in a morbid and stereotyped manner, the adolescent world, now a glimpse also opens up on the world of adults(?).

He does it through Alex, a 37-year-old advertiser, recently left by his long-term girlfriend, who one day accidentally collides with the scooter of 17-year-old Niki, tall, beautiful, defiant, endowed with that rudeness that the shrewd author-director highlights as a praiseworthy quality and who, as if expecting nothing else, effortlessly slips into Alex's SUV. And from here Moccia brings to life a kind of ridiculous generational clash-meeting, from which the "old" Alex emerges fully and obviously defeated, because he is subdued by the boldness, arrogance  and the presumed charm of a high school girl.

Sure, a storyline like this could lead to a justification based on the one-time allure of youth, a theme dear to much literature. But it's not so, because what objectively emerges from the film is a degraded, squalid youth world, devoid of ideas, values, and even feelings. Moccia, considered the spokesperson for the young, describes a reality that is often nonexistent and completely invented, and in any case unpresentable: young neighborhood bullies who have fun making illegal bets and then, vulgar and foul-mouthed girls, dressed very poorly, who brag about their sexual experiences, presented as models of virtue and coolness, and at the same time as examples of transgression, an unhealthy transgression, which here, often leads to illegality and poor taste. Contrary to what is said, in such a world there can be no room for true feelings, but only for instincts. Even the adult world is no different: a lawyer who repeatedly cheats on his wife, a wife who cheats on her husband, Alex's "old" girlfriend who cheats on him with a colleague and rival, only to return to him when the other is transferred. All interspersed with phrases from Baci Perugina, uttered by an annoying voice-over.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not possible to assert that Moccia's works are the mirror of the new generation, fortunately. But unfortunately, the opposite is possible. That is, the new generation tries to mirror itself in the atrocious youthful world of the great poet, defined as a singer of feelings and emotions. But the most unsettling aspect of the whole issue is above all the author's gaze, which in the film translates into the director's eye that lingers on the short skirt or the necklines of the seventeen-year-olds, on their mischievous glances, which often don't imply much, but which probably gave the 40-year-old poet the idea for this hallucinatory film in which his exclusive and personal imaginary as a demented writer for teenagers meets and enters that of the cool and provocative 17-year-olds.

Since I believe Moccia is quite aware that he hasn't written this stuff to enter the history of Literature, I wonder: personal experience or hope? ...you wish, Moccia...! Sorry, but... you're not Raul Bova!