Valeria Golino
Euforia

Every now and then, in the mornings when I get off work, I am exhausted and have two free hours. To unwind, I look for something light on Rai Play, but I regularly find myself facing themes like immigration, prisons, homosexuality, drug addiction, alcoholism, delinquency, aesthetics, bulimia, or anorexia, treated with extreme and highly embarrassing superficiality.

This morning I find among the suggestions Euforia with Scamarcio, Isabella Ferrari, Mastrandrea, Trinca, and Valentina Cervi directed by Valeria Golino.

I haven’t followed Valeria Golino's career much, but I remember her being wonderful in one of my favorite films "Respiro di Crialese," which is a 2002 neorealistic masterpiece. I wanted to give her a chance as a director, but unfortunately, the result is disastrous.

Let’s start with the themes addressed.

HOMOSEXUALITY

Since the "Bagno Turco," it’s been a slow decline for the theme of homosexuality. Nowadays, if there isn’t a Gay character in a film or series, it simply doesn’t get released. Scamarcio plays an improbable, almost sleazy, lecherous gay surrounded by pleasing and complacent friends who "feed" off his presence as if he were a star. This theme touches me particularly. I have many gay friends with incredibly difficult backgrounds who came out in the nineties, for example, losing family and friends as a result.

ILLNESS AND ADDICTIONS

Here too, everything is reversed. Scamarcio, the "former handsome" and not very credibly "damned," ruins his life on his own because of addictions. The health-conscious brother instead falls ill with a brain tumor, is unlucky, poor, separated, and also a tad bipolar, dysphoric, and assertive. The "ugly" and "poor" are no longer of this world (they are actually increasingly so). You don’t see morphine, the psychological and physical decline, the loss of psychophysical balance.

Psychological illness and addictions are treated even more in a reversed manner. In this country, DRUG ADDICTS not only no longer have the money to buy drugs but especially to treat themselves.

FAMILY

Scamarcio’s brother is Mastrandrea, whom I usually adore. When Mastrandrea enters his brother’s circle, he is disdainful and unaware of his brother’s illness, refusing to accept his brother’s dissolute lifestyle. At a certain point, roles are reversed. Scamarcio almost dies before Mastrandrea as an addict, causing a crisis in his entire life with many downfalls between promiscuous sex and embarrassing acting moments.

The EXTENDED FAMILY is now salvific in all films, reversing the reality, which is, of course, another. Even my beatified Jasmine Trinca performs in an insignificant cameo.

The photography and location aren’t bad (a beautiful Roman penthouse) with Isabella Ferrari, who now always plays the same part of the ex-wife, ex-beauty, and frustrated.

I don’t like the world; I will never become a misanthrope, but I must say that lately what I see "outside" doesn’t excite me at all.

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