Not funny enough to be much of a comedy, not really profound or complicated in a way to provoke thought, and not having anything very new to say, Giuseppe Piccioni’s Il Rosso E Il Blu (The Red and the Blue) was never-the-less a surprise.
I was surprised that Piccioni, the director of two of my favorite movies ( La Vita Che Vorrei and Luce Dei Miei Occhi ) would deliver a film so banal and with so many clichés.
There’s an older prof ( Roberto Herlitzka ) who ( surprise! ) is completely burned out and thinks it’s all a hopeless cause and a young, idealistic first year teacher (Riccardo Scarmarcio ) who is ( I’ll bet you can guess ) full of hope and ready to “make a difference”. And guess which one gets a little warmer and fuzzier in the end and which one gets a little older but wiser. Go ahead, guess.
The principal, played by Margherita Buy, is detached and no-nonsense, but is the one that, of course, makes the most important connection with a student. Don’t you just hate it when you see a movie that you could have sworn you’ve already seen – about a dozen times?
With the exception of Margherita Buy and Scamarcio, everyone is too obviously acting, particularly the kids, and the sentimentality of the dialogue weighs even them down a bit. Paolo Virzì’s ‘Caterina Va in Città’ does a much better job making the kids seem like real kids instead of soap opera actors, like in Il Rosso e Il Blu.
Most of you are probably too young to remember the original movie about a young, idealistic first year teacher, the 1967 Up The Down Staircase, but even way back then, the subject matter was predictable and overly romanticized. Forty-five years later Piccioni should have come up with something more.
I Love Italian Everything 