Is it nepotism or wisdom when award-winning director Paolo Virzì (La Prima Bella Cosa) hires his brother Carlo to do the soundtracks for his movies? Italian directors seem to like to work with people they like, and that’s understandable, but in the case of Paolo, the director, and Carlo, a musician, it seems like just good common sense. Carlo composed the music for his brother’s La Prima Cosa Bella and Caterina Va in Città.
The younger Virzì, Carlo, started as a musician in the now defunct band Snaporaz, sings and plays the guitar, and now he’s following in his brother’s footsteps and directing movies. If I’m to be honest, I enjoyed his I Più Grandi Di Tutti more than his brother Paolo’s award-winning La Prima Cosa Bella. I Più Grandi Di Tutti ventures out from the cliché Italian comedies that a lot of Italian directors have gotten away with for too long.
I Più Grandi Di Tutti is a comedy on the light side and even though, as an American, I’ve seen variations of this story told a hundred times and not very well , I saw immediately something different in Virzì’s: a spark. Maurizio Acerbi said what I’ve been trying to and better than I could have for Il Giornale:
In a time in which our Italian comedies are trying, without much success, to find their permanent center of gravity, perpetually chasing the success of our French cousins, a film ( I Più Grandi Di Tutti ) like this one from Carlo Virzì gives a little sign, if not of rebirth, at least of hope.
I’ll take it a step further and call it a big sign, not a little one, and I’ll even throw in a little cartwheel of joy for a pretty solid effort from a relatively new director. It’s not a perfect movie, and it won’t win a lot of awards. But it is genuinely funny, well casted and acted, fresh and original.
Starring Claudia Pandolfi, Alessandro Roja, Dario Cappanera and Marco Cocci as Sabrina, Loris, Rino, and Mao, members of a rock band that broke up, and not in a pretty way, 15 years earlier. The four musicians dispersed, hating each other and never wanting ever to see each other again until along came the rich, mysterious Ludovico Reviglio (Corrado Fortuna), begging them for an interview and for them to reunite for a concert. Their band, called Pluto was more of a flash in the pan and even Sabrina, Loris, Rino and Mao know it, but the guy is offering them a lot of money to do it, and they all really need the money.
Nothing turns out the way anyone thinks it will but the experience is redeeming for everyone involved, each for a different reason. It’s not maudlin, it’s not overblown and it’s not mawkish, the way I imagine it might have been if Hollywood had made this movie. It’s realistic; the four “losers” seem like real losers, and authentically washed up. I’m especially impressed with Claudia Pandolfi, who never in a million years could I have imagined being successful playing the half-baked chain-smoker who is trying without much success to live a legitimate life.
Once again, this movie is not available for Region 1 DVD players and has not been distributed here (but if you’d just break down and buy that region free DVD player, this wouldn’t be a problem).
I Love Italian Everything 