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Rating: For my generation, these three have built a kind of comedic mythology. Situations, phrases, interjections that have entered our daily lives as a constant ironic-desecrating commentary, a bit like certain memorable exclamations from Ragionier Ugo.
In its early film manifestations, the trio provided evidence of a certain intelligence: the films within films (from neorealism to gothic), the metaphysical journeys, the existential cut of bittersweet comedies. Then, perhaps due to the beauty of the first three, I began to repudiate all the subsequent ones, almost lost interest. Hitting rock bottom with "Reuma Park," for a few years, the trio has started to climb back up.
This latest work has a certain rigor in writing, as if there is a need to consolidate the comedy framework because the jokes and comedic mechanisms are more or less always the same (but never unpleasant). And the structure works, it actually proves apt in identifying different themes, which pop up implacably amidst smiles. One savors that Milanese world (or thereabouts) that thrives on subtle antipathies, a latent malaise of living that is the offspring of widespread prosperity. The newlywed children doomed to unhappiness, the continuous wear and tear between two business partners who have worked together for thirty years but live two completely different and indeed irreconcilable points of view. Life is hinged on gigantic lies, which hold everything together as pillars.
In showing the failure of a gargantuan wedding, the trio (with Massimo Venier directing) isolates and certifies the contradictions of a bourgeoisie that often shows itself to be malicious, sly, envious, or naive, childish. Always dealing with money. Everything costs thousands of euros.
The gears of catastrophe are quite straightforward and as they accumulate, they reveal a certain repetitiveness. Everything falls apart, but that’s the least of it. Between one prank and another, some devices are deployed that expose that life full of hypocrisy.
In the end, one is saved by a mantra: "Every end is a new beginning." After the disastrous collapse, there is no longer an attempt to save appearances, but there is a search for new, different happiness. A somewhat fence-sitting closure that does not overly diminish the corrosive charge towards that Milanese bourgeoisie that deludes itself into being happy while nurturing lies and barely concealed hostility toward the diner opposite.
An explosive device effective for the functional characterization of the array of characters. Just two strokes each, then the alchemies form and explode with the encounter-clash of characters and the unpredictable revelation of some uncomfortable truths. In all this, some finally understand the mistakes made, the fallacy of a life of appearances. Some have the strength to become aware, others let themselves live a bit passively, but eventually, they too flee from that daily poison.
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