Matteo Oleotto
Zoran il mio nipote scemo

A decent cook is at work, and with the elements at hand, he tries to offer his diners a dish that best expresses his culinary skills. A solid dish, not at all revolutionary and distantly removed by several galaxies from the "nouvelle cuisine" made of jellies, refined contrasts, and seemingly extreme and improbable unions of ingredients. The cook, therefore, relies on tradition and seeks to approach perfection by crafting a typical, hearty dish with a strong flavor, capable of embodying the closed and reserved personality of the locals. A main course that deserves to be paired with a good glass of wine, for ecstasy on the palate before the descent into the esophagus.

The major work is done when, before plating, a sleeve is wiped across the brow beaded with sweat. It's at this point that, for no apparent reason other than madness, he decides to spread a caramel sauce that has absolutely nothing to do with it. That overly sweet layer can't entirely erase the good cooking of the meat and the deliciousness of the sides, but it can irreparably ruin a dish that would have made a damn good impression.

The main issue is that Matteo Oleotto, the director, put in effort and time to build a convincing structure for the overall dramatic story he wanted to tell us. The sad figure of Paolo, well portrayed by Battiston, is typical of the mountain towns from which I come; I've known several forty-somethings consumed by solitude and alcohol abuse. The final ten minutes of “Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot”, which magically erase the problems with a flick of a wrist in a ridiculous amount of time, are totally alien to reality and, above all, to what had been carefully and skillfully told by the actors and the director before. The tone of the work is dramatic for a hundred minutes and turns into a fairy tale in the last ten. This is the reason why I find this ending, seemingly dropped from the Moon, a lack of guts capable of ruining a good film, turning it into a decent, stereotyped comedy without edge like a thousand others in recent Italian cinema.

The absurd thing is that Oleotto had already shot the right ending.

2 and a half stars