I have never felt so misled by a trailer in my whole life.
The premise was promising and the trailer showed off cinematographer Daniele Cipri’s visuallly exciting style, but five minutes into director Renato De Maria’s La Vita Oscena I knew we were all in trouble; in my head, I was already cringing at the cloying voiceover.
From a book by Aldo Nove, La Vita Oscena tells the author’s “true story” about wanting to die after losing his parents. After flirting with the idea of actual suicide, he decides to kill himself with drugs and sex, and yet the closest he comes to getting his wish is when he accidentally blows up his house. Was it an underlying will to live or just that the young man, played by Clement Metayer, was an inept suicide attempter; it seemed the latter to me.
The mother, played by Isabella Ferrari, was a hippy and her son’s everything, so when the diagnosis was cancer, the boy and the film plunged into a seemingly endless and self-destructive death watch. And all things said, Ferrari should be given credit for her role as the dying “flower child”, giving the movie its only sense of authenticity.
How this tragic situation managed to end up so boring and trivial is a mystery to me. I’d give it more thought, but in the end, I just don’t care.
I Love Italian Everything 