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"Mollo tutto" is an Italian comedy, directed by an Italo-Spanish director and dates back to 1995. The talented Renato Pozzetto, in yet another lead role, moves us and makes us reflect on a series of ever-current issues and does so through a blatantly light-hearted and popular film. For example: who wouldn't want to kiss goodbye to the everyday routine, filled with work and family problems, traffic and a decadent government, complaining lovers, and daily annoyances?
The protagonist is the owner of a delicatessen in Rome and is married to D'Urso, who in the film is quite sexy (but since she ended up in the glossy "Big Brother" world, she lost all my esteem) and has a daughter who mingles with characters of dubious taste, plus a Polish lover. It's not quite clear what triggers, what dark mechanism of suburban exasperation drives the protagonist to shed his own identity, family, and work, and indeed leave everything to go to the sun of North Africa and live in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The fact is, with fake documents, posing as African, he gets expelled from Italy and, with the help of a phantom money transfer company, he has all his assets transferred to a Tunisian account. Unfortunately, once he arrives in Africa, he discovers he doesn't have a dime: the company has scammed him, leaving him with nothing. Unable to achieve his goal of existential serenity, he then decides to accumulate money and return to Italy. Only, at the embassy, he is not recognized as Italian, as he presents the fake African documents. After a series of incredible temporary jobs like a singing pizza maker, a waiter, a clockmaker, he still finds himself forced, after being robbed of his accumulated savings, to return as a clandestine. The journey is somewhat, amidst the stench of urine and despair, the account of what thousands of desperate people try to accomplish every day to lead a better life.
There is no presumption, but delicacy, in showing from the perspective of the downtrodden a truly marginal reality. The truth is not easy to grasp. Pozzetto will take an African child with him, or rather, the African child will escape with Pozzetto, to Italy, and he will accompany him to Rome on this desperate journey. Back in Italy, Pozzetto and the child share a reality of begging and makeshift living, cleaning car windows, sleeping in abandoned vehicles, and selling roses in restaurants. The bond that forms between the young boy and Renato is intense and tender. Pozzetto discovers that his wife, after his departure, became wealthy and entrepreneurial, opening a mega gastronomy business. She will recognize her husband but paradoxically pretend not to recognize him (only a beard differentiates the Afro-Pozzetto from the Italo version) and will bring him into the house as a servant. Pozzetto will rediscover himself as a grandfather and man of the house, jealous of a woman he had abandoned. He will never let himself go, maybe out of shame, to an evident truth, with his wife and daughter laughing behind his back, driving him crazy with countless pranks. It's all a bit paradoxical and forced, but that's how Pozzetto's films are, a bit grotesque, light, witty, and carefree. The African child, initially abandoned, will suffer greatly, but he won't be forgotten when, at the end, the wife cuts her husband's big beard and makes him believe it was all a dream. A little absurd, but everyone will pretend nothing happened.
If the film aims to have a documentary effect, it succeeds only marginally, but the actor is so funny that you're inclined to overlook it and smile warmly. Pozzetto is an incredible figure, now an absolute symbol of a certain kind of earthy Italian comedy, but he is decent, brilliant, and "agile".
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