Neri Parenti
Fratelli d'Italia

Hello everyone and welcome back to these cinema pages!

I've been waiting for years for the chance to review, with and for You as I usually do, what I consider to be the best episodic film of the '80s, and probably the best Italian comedy of the era, even considering its relative lack of public success, which did not prevent it from becoming a small-great classic, especially for those who had the foresight to record it on VHS or DVD, as it was unavailable for years on the official home video market.

Rightly, you're probably wondering what the occasion might be that, besides making a man a thief, remade Il_Paolo a reviewer, and it's only right and proper that I come to tell you, even if it's about my own affairs: a few weeks ago, due to a volcanic cloud over the skies of mid-Europe, your trusted author had to return home, not with a comfortable flight aboard a Mad Dog, but, with the air travel interrupted halfway, renting a car and driving back up a good part of our splendid Boot.

It was during that journey that the inspiration returned to me, aided by a stop at an Autogrill restroom, and an anabasis which, as relentless and vindictive as life can really be, forced me to drive against the blinding sun, squinting at times to make room for the memory of this film, before resuming control of the vehicle and arriving, tired but serene, at my modest table, on a Saturday when I couldn't even cultivate the anticipation of the coming celebration.

But let's get to the serious matters, namely the film: shot by Neri Parenti in '89, with nods to the upcoming soccer World Cup, "Fratelli d'Italia" initially appears to be the classic filler in the otherwise brilliant career of the director, using what the most superficial consider an old trick of Italian comedy, namely the episodic film: single short stories that perhaps wouldn't stand alone and wouldn't justify, given the poverty of the comedic premise, a longer film; plots entrusted to three actors with guaranteed appeal for different geographic segments of the audience, surrounded by professional character actors who bring much more to the production than it costs to cast them; unrelated stories, lacking in narrative richness, apparently linked by a thin thread of concord in the device that connects them: here, at least without Kieslowskian symbolism but with all-Italian concreteness, a Fiat Tipo, a mainstream model at the time and a dream far from impossible for the middle class that constituted the typical audience for these works.

The stroke of genius, I don't know how involuntary, but certainly felt by me and my acolytes, lies, however, in the deep common thread that binds and defines the structure of the individual stories, making them ultimately become the same story, the representation of the same character seen from three different profiles and perspectives, amplifying their contours as in a Futurist movement by Balla or Boccioni, who, not surprisingly, celebrated the car on which the film's protagonists travel as the greatest product of modernity, the tool capable of shattering the perception of space and time, and, with it, also the self-perception of the individual, expanding his potential and actions to touch the paradoxes of an Einstein, of a Tesla, in a "Philadelphia Experiment" alla aglio, olio (sic) e peperoncino, if you don't like either the meusa sandwich or the strawberry risotto from Triuggio.

The same character, human type, man machine, is represented, in this work, by Christian De Sica, who opens the dance in the first episode, heading from Rome to Golfo Aranci, in a vacation setting perfectly ahead of today's neocafonal times, by Jerry Calà, a ladies' man in the Verona-Berghem direction, and, finally, by Massimo Boldi, in the final triangulation Milan-Rome, the capital where everything seems to begin and end.

The subtle game of Parenti and the Vanzina brothers, here as screenwriters, is that of the apparent exaltation of mimesis and the desire to identify with the other, driven by envy (from in-video: I look towards, I look with suspicion, but also, with a little pun: I look "in video", with a television as a catalyst of dreams), which probably constitutes one of the recurring anthropological traits in different categories of Italian citizens: and so, De Sica, a Roman plebeian with an unmistakable accent and even more unpresentable friends in tow (including the apt Fabrizio Bracconeri), envies the wealthy guests in Sardinia and tries to assimilate to them, at least in name (changing names and language: perhaps, in the Vanzina mindset, res sunt consequentia nominum), to win over the attractive Turchese De Benedetti, perhaps a parody of Azzurra Caltagirone (but I couldn't say for sure), until he is exposed, proudly reaffirming his social, linguistic, and nominal self; Calà, a Veronese loafer who dallies in the Veronese square dedicated to those who, like Dante, best described past and perhaps contemporary Italian types, envies his employer at Sauli (again a nominal parody of Bauli; and here a fond memory goes to Gian Fabio Bosco of Ric & Gian, who left us a few weeks ago), mimicking in an attempt to woo his wife (a voluptuous Sabrina Salerno who, in real life, indeed lives in Veneto and is married to an entrepreneur), and ends up being punished both in his sexual ambitions and in his desire to be socially accepted as an industrial manager (and, not by chance, being demoted to merely a chauffeur, both professionally and sexually subdued); in the final episode, certainly the most successful in a comic apotheosis that almost dazzles, thanks also to the contributions of Maurizio Mattioli and Angelo Bernabucci (the "teribbbili!" Roman fans who would later reappear in a similar episode in the late "Tifosi", '99), the Milanese and paleo-Berlusconi Boldi is forced by events to mimic what, more explicitly and more clearly than in the previous episodes, is his alter ego and at the same time his enemy, here too being punished and chastised by events as he seeks to extricate himself from the situation, reaffirming his individuality and his Milan fan status, against his occasional travel companions who believe, or maliciously pretend to believe, he's a Romanista and an ultra.

Following the individual stories in a continuum, there emerges the necessary interpenetration between mimesis and punishment, which in De Sica is captured on the sexual and social plane, in Calà on the sexual plane and the relationship with power, to transcend, in Boldi – mutilated in his sexuality with cartoonish effects – into a universal dimension, considering that in the film's final catharsis, our protagonist becomes the designated victim of his enemies (the Roman fans), of what used to be friends (Milan fans), and of power itself (the police).

Beyond the jokes and witticisms that nonetheless ennoble a film among the funniest of the era, a moral apologue emerges in which being Other than Oneself, envying, looking askew or on video, is captured as an inevitable moment in everyone's life, but, at the same time, as the beginning of a possible slope of losing oneself and one's identifying values, with effects that will not tardily demonstrate their catastrophic repercussions, on every level of life.

Know thyself, warned Socrates, and, as the Four Tops sing, "it's the same old song," for millennia; the fact is we haven't yet learned enough, and it certainly won't be this small, charming, and intelligent film to prove otherwise.

After all, wisdom is millennial, while life is brief; for some, like Edmondo Berselli, to whom my evening thoughts went traveling toward a rain-battered Modena as the face of mourning, a bit too much.

Indefettibilmente Yours,

Il_Paolo