People get a weird smile on their face when they hear about my blog I Love Italian Movies and when this happens, in my head I do some immediate calculations to determine which of these three things they are probably thinking:
a) “Awww, how cute. This old lady has a blog.
b) “Hmmm…I thought she was a little obsessive. She’s one of those annoying Italophiles that thinks she’s special because she knows a little bit about Italy.
c) “Italian movies? I’m already bored. How can I get away from this conversation without being rude?”
They’re clearly uncomfortable, so I change the subject and ask if they’ve seen the latest Brad Pitt movie, and then I wonder if I am just a crazy old lady with a blog that nobody cares about.
In my defense, when I tell you that you should watch Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza or Giuseppe Tornatore’s La Migliore Offerta, I’m not doing it to show off what I know about Italian stuff. I’m not doing it because I have some kind of weird Italian fetish. I’m telling you about these movies because:
a) I love these movies and it’s a natural inclination the want to share things that you love with people. The movies that I love are probably not going to show up at your local cineplex and you might have to go out of your way to see them, but you might enjoy them so I want you to know about them.
b) Am I obsessive? Am I a boring Italophile? Maybe, but I do happen to know a lot about Italian movies and you might just be interested in this stuff if you just give me a minute.
c) Italy is a country, not a movie genre, and to lump all Italian movies together in the same category does everybody a disservice. Having “Italy” as a Netflix category makes as much sense as having one for “American Movies”. Italian film themes have become pretty diverse and are increasingly universal so
d) If you love movies, you are really limiting yourselves if you aren’t reaching for them outside your borders. I am not a film aficionado. I am a movie lover. I love stupid comedies, improbably murder mysteries and wacky ghost stories as much as I love highbrow foreign films. And if the stupid comedy or improbable murder mystery is a foreign film, so much the better because…
e) …in the end, watching foreign films is good for you. Yes, this is the part where I get all preachy, and I am sorry, but we Americans really should watch a foreign film once in a while. Don’t you want to know how other people live, what they think is funny, how they are like you and how they are different? After all, you’ll feel a great new bond with people when you share a good cry or a good laugh over a fart joke. Foreign films aren’t just for college credit, they can be a lot of fun.
I Love Italian Everything 