• Rating:
Calcare's strength lies precisely in being able to place the general, the universal, within a narrative construct that is almost down-to-earth, in the sense that it deals with the most normal issues, like goofing off and odd jobs, friends and crushes, with great detail and care. In short, Michele Rech's genius lies in bringing the human scenarios of Roman neighborhoods into artistic form, including a language that skillfully uses the author's unmistakable cadence and even a few words of straightforward Roman dialect.
Moreover, there is a psychological and analytical exploration of daily issues that leads to results that are almost paradoxical, hyperbolic, or it simply manages to portray characters with a taste for the absurd and caricature that are distinctive traits of the author. So we have the analysis of the house as if it were Westeros from Game of Thrones, the best friend who seems like an ice cream-devouring zombie, the in-depth study of why Zero is obsessed with doing things ahead of time. The fixations on how to behave with girls, told with a sincerity that cannot fail to strike.
That is his strength: the truth, the purest narration of his stories which, ultimately, are everyone's stories. But they are illuminating events not so much for the moral one draws from them (although appreciable) but for all the collateral elements added. In this sense, watch the video with the easter eggs to understand how much devotion is in each scene, how many references to pop culture (the posters are numerous), how much reality in the places, in the people (how funny the mouse girls), how many layers of consciousness are deposited in every action Calcare takes. Very ordinary actions, and for this reason even more precious for the viewer, because they find themselves in them without that usual perspective distance of movies or TV series. No, we embrace Michele's normality as if it were our own, and the Armadillo conscience that comes to judge us always leaves us with a spur, a remorse, a wound. It truly opens our minds to questions.
The tragedy that ensues is handled with care, avoiding both the torrents of tears and an overly easy moral. At the end, the protagonist wonders how he could have been so self-centered not to understand. And it is not at all a trivial matter, for any of us.
If anything, after watching, there would be a reflection on the possibility of constructing more structured plots. But I don't think he will ever do it, because it would distort him. This is Calcare, a true author with his "anti-novels" of the neighborhood. Six episodes that are pure digression, only to return to the heart of the matter and pin us there, in front of our faults and oversights. But always with a light touch, without this being a definitive word, but only a truce... "Idiot!"
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