Stefano Salvati
Albakiara

I had heard a lot about this film: to be honest, more than the film itself, people talked about its high level of transgression which, according to statements, was supposed to make this seemingly childish film one of the most censored films in Italy in recent years.

I was particularly curious to see Salvati's work, who is certainly not a newcomer (more than 18 years of commendable direction of music videos and commercials for Italian and non-Italian artists, among which I remember the beautiful clip of Vasco Rossi's "gli angeli" in collaboration with Polanski).

Well, hoping until the last minute not to find myself in front of a predictable two-hour music video, I went to the cinema, confident in my belief that the cinema atmosphere often makes even the most stale mush digestible. Never was a prophecy truer: the music video is all there, only it lasts an hour and a half.

But if I decided to review this film, a choice rightly debatable for many, it is not to make a dry and unfounded critique, but to try to analyze it with the utmost clarity possible: after all, it is easy to praise universally recognized masterpieces, a bit less to try to salvage a work destined from the start for the recycling bin.

The film has a cross-cutting plot, a style widely used in Hollywood with various "Magnolia" and "Crash", which in turn draw heavily from "Short Cuts" by the great Altman. Chiara-Albakiara is her web nickname - is the classic middle-class teenager, oozing rebellion and desire to transgress from every pore: she drinks, smokes joints, screws anything that moves; but her great love is Nico, a "charming" DJ who decides to open a home version of Youporn. The protagonists' paths will undergo a decisive turn thanks to a corrupt cop, a strange English teacher, and a huge load of pure cocaine...

There's a lot on the plot's plate: besides the banal (and stereotyped to the max) description of the chemical generation of 2000, all about parties and romps, the film tries to mix the most disparate genres and registers. It goes from romantic comedy à la Moccia, through pulp, crime, soft-porn, and even splatter. Said like this, it would seem an interesting and courageous choice: maybe it is in intentions, but not in results, a dispersive cauldron of completely unrelated and self-serving scenes.

The direction and editing certainly don't help: profuse split-screen shots, computer graphics inserts (terribly ridiculous protagonist's sister's visions), digital flowers, and overprinted texts in uni-posca style. In short, it feels like watching the editing done by a teenager who received a new Mac for Christmas and wants to try all the Imovie effects together passionately. The most abominable result? Surely the blow job competition in the parking lot, complete with stopwatches, countdowns, virtual sprays, and comic-style onomatopoeic captions that make you miss West's Batman.

Returning to the plot, if the romantic-comedy register results in being banal and stale, the dramatic-almost-horror twist is interesting but implausible and confusing and, accompanied by the visual kitsch mentioned above, loses what little credibility it tries to build little by little with the plot's evolution. The latter isn't free from narrative holes either, with an ending that is more a collect call. Is it all true or just imagination? Why does the native English teacher who doesn't know a word of Italian write a book in our language? Why insert, into an already absurd story, a character like the clairvoyant schizophrenic sister with apocalyptic visions?

Speaking of acting, one can only consider Alessandro Haber's role wasted, limited to a tragic-comic caricature. Dario Bandiera is unbearable with his stereotype of the Sicilian criminal, the son of Rossi is mediocre, limited to a character who has 4-5 consecutive lines throughout the film and with the sex appeal of a loafer. Raz Degan, pumped after the praises for "Cento chiodi," tries too hard, not having yet understood that acting is something not even remotely close to his strings. Very good is the performance of the great comedian Vito, who characterizes a janitor who inspires sympathy and disquiet at the same time. Laura Gigante, the protagonist, certainly has a pretty face, but as noted by some critics, her voice is simply a "divine punishment."

And the music? That's the most shocking thing. Albakiara and Vasco have nothing to do with it: the songs are inserted into the plot at random (terrible the "lalalalalala, make me come!" during a webcam screw), unmistakably highlighting the immense marketing campaign around the production. Salvati's Albakiara is the exact opposite of the shy girl sung by Blasco, but saying that they wanted to highlight the change in the adolescent generation is too pretentious, as there is no claim of social analysis in the film, which sometimes appears crude, like a pocket guide.

But, in short, what's good about "Albakiara"? Surely the basic idea, the overturning of the romantic comedy in a pulp key, with unusual but interesting inserts, which should be supported by an appropriate and truly transgressive directorial perspective.

Indeed, because there's very little transgression in Albakiara: an hour and a half of blow jobs, sniffs and screws, and then the director bleeps the words "cazzo" and "culo"...

Mah!