A movie has to have a raison d’être, right? (or should I say “ragione d’essere”?) After all, for his 2009 Italians, director Giovanni Veronesi went to a lot of trouble to make this movie, enlisting big stars Carlo Verdone, Sergio Castellitto, and Riccardo Scamarcio and shooting on location in Dubai, Morocco, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Italians is a two-part movie with parts that, as far as I can see, have nothing much to do with each other except that they are both about Italians who have traveled out of Italy.
In part one, Sergio Castellitto plays Fortunato, a guy who has been supporting his family by transporting stolen Ferraris to Dubai. He’s been pretty successful with this risky business, earning trust in the region and with his boss in Italy, but he’s ready to retire. For his successor he’s chosen the young Marcello (Ricardo Scamarcio) and his boss reminds him that if this is a bad choice they could all end up in the slammer.
Fortunato takes Marcello for a training run, intending to show him the route, introduce him to everybody, and then step down. Let’s just say Marcello may be more trouble than he’s worth and leave it at that for now.
In part two, Carlo Verdone plays Giulio, a dentist that’s going to St. Petersburg for a conference that he doesn’t want to go to. His wife has left him (does Carlo Verdone ever play a guy that is “lucky in love?”) and so his buddy decides that this trip could be just the ticket for cheering Giulio up. He puts him in contact with Vito Calzone (Dario Bandiera), an Italian in Russia that runs a high-class call girl organization and believes that “Italians abroad should look out for each other”.
So what is the ragione d’essere for this film? To show us that Italians have a hard time behaving themselves abroad?
There are some good things that were just wasted on this movie, like the scene in which Guilio explains the different regions of Italy to a bunch of Russian orphans; that was adorable. And there’s a funny scene with Giulio’s translator (Kseniya Rappoport) getting even with him by telling him that the Russians want him to sing a traditional Italian song when they’ve only just asked if he liked his hotel. (Is Carlo Verdone ever not funny?) But was the rest of Italians worth the trouble? I’m thinking that it wasn’t.
Director: Giovanni Veronesi
Writers: Giovanni Veronesi
Stars: Carlo Verdone, Sergio Castellitto, Riccardo Scamarcio
no English subtitles
I Love Italian Everything 