For this year, at Easter, let's keep it light … at least at the cinema. With this good understanding, the writer intended to offer you the vision of a good, wholesome Italian comedy. One of those films that do no harm to anyone, are easily digested, do not cause burning discussions and, in the end, fulfill their task of relaxation and cinematic well-being. Instead, as sometimes happens, we ran into two frozen and badly defrosted products. It's about Put your grandmother in the freezer, directed by Giancarlo Fontana and Giuseppe G. Stasi, with Fabio De Luigi and Miriam Leone, and by An exaggerated party, directed by Vincenzo Salemme, with himself as protagonist, main actor, extra, lighting director, costume designer etc etc. and other notable performers, such as Tosca D'Aquino.
Readers will forgive us a quote and a paraphrase: “The art of not reading is very important. It consists in not taking into hand what at any moment immediately occupies the majority of the public" di Arthur Schopenhauer. In this case we need the art of not seeing certain films which, unfortunately, is not easy to learn.
The first film, just a few minutes after the start of the screening, immediately raises a question. Why propose such a film? It's not comical, it's not dramatic, nothing happens that could vaguely arouse an interest capable of carrying through to the end of the film with any degree of satisfaction. The story (based on a real event) is simple: a restorer in financial difficulty survives thanks to her grandmother's pension which, once she dies, threatens to ruin her work. The clever ruse involves not reporting her disappearance, freezing the body, and continuing to collect the pension. It happens that fate brings in an officer of the Guardia di Finanza (who doesn't really seem to bring out a good picture) who, in the end, will be able to solve the problem. The two protagonists do their best to give depth to the characters but they can't get out of a clumsy acting and a patched up script. In short, it doesn't deserve more than one star just to give confidence to two young directors.
Having overcome the trauma of the first disappointment, let's try to make up for it with Salemme's second film, hoping for his theatrical and cinematic experience. In his curriculum there are interesting works and qualified collaborations: from the first films with Nanni Moretti, passing with Giuseppe Tornatore and ending with a consolidated friendship with Carlo Vanzina. The wait for a decent film was therefore justified, at least able to balance the bill with the previous film we wrote about. The story, entirely Neapolitan, takes place in a wealthy condominium in Vomero overlooking the gulf where preparations are underway for the eighteenth birthday of the protagonist's daughter, Salemme himself. A nefarious accident disrupts the expected celebrations. Apart from a few people, probably paid by the production, the chill of insipience sets in the room. Cooked and boiled jokes, grotesque situations bordering on the ridiculous (which could also give rise to laughter) with the protagonist, director, actor and extra always in the foreground, who find it hard to give a physiognomy to the story. And here, the writer stops. As has rarely happened in many years of cinematographic visions of all kinds, this time nothing has reached the limit and it was right to go out at the end of the first half. Barely deserves a star, for another Salemme we have known in the past.
It is well known that comedy, a sense of humour, as well as drama on the contrary, all refer to a very subjective reading of human affairs. Cinema, from this point of view, is of great help in the possibility of seeing or reviewing real life reflected on the big screen and, even more, if in an entertaining form it allows better to pierce the armor of the different sensibilities. Sadly, for these two films, little good seems to have come out of them. With all due respect to the Italian comedy.
A suggestion for reviewing a masterpiece in the history of cinema: on April 2, 1968 it was screened for the first time 2001 A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. Not just science fiction but a general treatise on the meaning of humanity in space and time. After more than 50 years, a great film to see and see again for another few years.
