This is the theme of Live, the last work signed by Francesca Archibugi with main performers the good (how usual and obvious) Micaela Ramazzotti and Adriano Giannini. Of note are two characters who deserve attention: the first is Marcello Fonte, actor revelation / phenomenon of Dogman, the second is the little girl Lucilla (Elisa Miccoli), who already masters the trade as one of her consummate colleagues.
The story is as simple as it is fragile: in an anonymous Roman suburb, terraced houses of the small and middle class, lives a complicated family: a father who is a freelance journalist without art (only in the end will he show a thread of dignity), a second wife , Susi "svalvolata" always on the run, agitated and frenetic as much as she needs affection that she doesn't receive from her partner who instead turns it to the Irish babysitter with whom she has an all sexual affair, dry as an ice lolly. In the background, a widowed doctor, also looking for affection and a little girl looking for healing while a disturbing character, Perind, observes this bizarre "family". The film unfolds without a reason and without a justification: it looks like a collection of notes collected almost everywhere, in the history of the director and her films, in the common (and sometimes banal) narratives of a Rome as beautiful as it is messy, impregnated with that much more and that much less that make it its wealth. We see and talk about perverse plots first of all between members of this "family" and then between politics and entrepreneurs, of the habits of rich and reckless young people from Pariolini (district of Rome) dealing with cocaine and of the respectable but questionable lawyer grandfather dealing with bizarre habits of acquaintances with viados and transvestites. In short, a family picture with interiors and exteriors somewhat problematic, to put it mildly. In one way or another, no one comes out well: all fragile and poor, and, as we said before, only those who observe from the outside, those who do not participate in real life, the supporting actors, assume dignity.
The theme is how to deal with a narrative of this kind. Archibugi, in good company with a large part of contemporary Italian cinema, offers a "photographic" reading of this kind. These are, in fact, short and impromptu shots, as aseptic as a scalpel, on very complex social and cultural dynamics, objectively very difficult to summarize in 100 minutes of cinema. Everything seems, as usual, without answers and without proposals. Certainly, not that these should come from the big screen, but, from the moment in which we want to address this issue, we can expect something more than the usual refrain on the crisis of the family and the bourgeoisie.
Behind of Live, of this category of cinematographic narration, there are innumerable and illustrious precedents that allow us to make legitimate as merciless comparisons: to go to a distant past we mention, at random, The discreet charmeof the bourgeoisie by Luis Bunuel (1972) and Family group with interior (1974) by Luchino Visconti. To get to our day and family memories: The holiday makers (2019) by Valeria Bruni Germans and, even before that, the devastating Perfect strangers (2016) by Paolo Genovese.
