Sergio Castellito’s Son Pietro In “È Nata Una Star”

www.comingsoon.it — Luciana Littizzetto, Rocco Papaleo and Pietro Castellito

I could have watched a lot of things last night; my order from ibs.it arrived and I’ll finally have the chance to see Diaz (Non Pulire Questo Sangue) and Romanzo di una Strage.

But no, I chose director Lucio Pellegrini’s comedy, È Nata Una Star? starring Luciana Littizzetto, Rocco Papaleo and Pietro Castellito, son of actor/director Sergio Castellitto and best-selling author Margaret Mazzantini. This 2012 comedy asks parents to consider something that they probably never have: What would you do if you found out that your teenage son was a porn star? Well, I shouldn’t say “never”; I hadn’t ever worried about that. Have you?

In the film, parents, Lucia and Fausto find out about their son Marco’s double life when the nosy neighbors drop off a copy of their son’s film debut and it throws their world into chaos. But not enough chaos. Seriously, if you pop a DVD into the player and suddenly find yourself watching your son in the lead role of a porno movie, you might be asking yourself a little more than, “Wow, I wonder where he inherited that huge penis?”. I guess it’s hard to judge how parents who have always wondered if their child will ever discover a special talent and find that this is it will react. I concede that I don’t really know how I’d feel, but I’m guessing there’d be more emotion than there was in È Nata Una Star?.

I watched the film primarily to see what kind of actor Sergio Castellitto and Margaret Mazzantini had produced, and though Pietro’s character was supposed to be shy and unexpressive (it’s always the quiet ones that turn out to be porn stars; right?), he may have been a little too much so. I’ll wait until I see him in his father’s new movie with Penelope Cruz, Twice Born to make a final assessment.

The story is from the book written by an author I’m very fond of, Nick Hornsby (About a Boy, High Fidelity) and now I’m going to have to read it to find out if this movie is boring because of the author or the director. There’s just something missing in this film and I’m not sure who or what to blame. Maybe Hornsby’s British humor just doesn’t translate well into Italian.