Michele Riondino
Palazzina LAF

A common saying claims that "work ennobles man." Too bad it’s not always true, and each of us could provide many examples to support this. And if there are any doubts about it, I warmly recommend going to see the film "Palazzina LAF," directed and starring Michele Riondino.

In the meantime, I spontaneously welcome this film because in Italy, for too long, certain themes have not been adequately addressed, and from this point of view, a director like Elio Petri, who once directed a great film like "The Working Class Goes to Heaven," is much missed. In "Palazzina LAF," Michele Riondino takes us no less than to the Ilva of Taranto in the distant 1997. Yet another worker dead in an accident, and after the poor soul's funeral, we follow the odyssey of a certain Caterino Lamanna (played by Riondino himself), also a worker at Ilva, but entirely consumed by his personal problems such as imminent marriage and low salary.

Someone who is quite indifferent to what is happening around him, until one fine (or foul) day, he receives an indecent proposal (to say the least) from one of the Ilva personnel directors (a certain Dr. Basile played by Elio Germano): to be promoted to the position of employee with the specific task of discreetly monitoring the union delegates and reporting accordingly. A nice promotion, with a company car provided, and the poor sap (how else to describe him) promptly takes the bait. Too bad that, as a zealous servant, he does not realize the thicket he is walking into when he requests and obtains to settle in that notorious Palazzina LAF. Here, for those who didn't know, it was not an urban legend but a horrible reality; the Ilva management had confined those employees considered unreliable and redundant. And everything was accepted according to the prevailing logic at Ilva because, as Dr. Basile himself reiterated, those employees were offered the opportunity to remain employed by performing tasks with a worker's qualification. If they didn’t like it, they could remain confined in the notorious Palazzina, passing the time without doing anything. After all, the Ilva company had to restructure, and the consequent plan had been signed by the union representatives themselves.

Needless to say (and without adding other plot details) that in such a hallucinatory situation, anyone would have been uncomfortable, even the snitch Lamanna himself (a fictional character but very plausible since every company has its share of paid informants). It should be noted that for this practice of systematic bullying, there was a legal proceeding, and the Ilva management did not fare well.

A story, therefore, of moral human misery that Riondino, based on Alessandro Leogrande's novel "Smoke Over the City," illustrates effectively. Especially well-drawn is the protagonist Caterino Lamanna, a man of mediocre quality, a cross between a poor soul and a modern Judas (as he himself dreams of being alongside a wooden Jesus Christ during the patron saint’s procession). Here, in one of the best parts of the film, the dream dimension deeply affects Lamanna, who realizes, too late, that he is involved in a terrible game much bigger than his small person.

A work, therefore, valid and evocative, which has the merit of reminding us how, in Italy, endowed with a highly praised constitution, the reality in the workplace can be disheartening. The theory speaks to us of the Italian Republic founded on work and the dignity of the same. But what is visible in the film "Palazzina LAF" confirms that filth like confinement departments in factories and the practice of mobbing in the workplace, unfortunately, do not belong to science fiction novels. Let us not forget all this.