Claudio Cupellini’s knock down drag out love story.
Alaska (The Beginners) will be screened Friday, June 3, 8:45pm (Q&A with Claudio Cupellini)
Wednesday, June 8, 2:00pm as part of The Film Society Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.
Fausto and Nadine (Elio Germano and Astrid Berges-Frisbey) get off on the wrong foot, romantically speaking, and before they can even go out on a first date, Fausto gets arrested and a two year prison sentence. Yeah, it’s sounds like bad break for a young guy just trying to impress a girl, but he was kind of asking for it, trespassing and then committing assault and battery at his workplace in an act of misplaced chivalry.
But one girl’s “this guy is scary, let me out of here” is another girl’s “wow, that’s of kind sexy!”, and though Nadine never visits Fausto in jail, he pines away for her, and she ultimately keeps her promise to never forget him, meeting him at the prison gate when he gets out. (“”I did promise you.”) These two lonely souls feel an attraction that could be described as star-crossed, but in their case I prefer the term “messed-up”; it’s the kind of relationship that Dr. Phil could devote two episodes to. “Star-crossed” implies bad luck, and these two bring most of the bad luck upon themselves.
It’s a boy meets girl, boy and girl find every way possible to torture each other kind of story, and the question remains, is this love?
Is it love? I kind of think this is one of those subjects on which Italians and Americans might disagree, and I guarantee you’ll be asking yourself most of the way through Alaska. Above all, you’ll be impressed with the extraordinary performances by Elio Germano and Astrid Berges-Frisbey, the two disenfranchised individuals who long for love, and are drawn to each other for reasons that only lonely, disenfranchised people could explain.
Friday, June 3, 8:45pm (Q&A with Claudio Cupellini)
Wednesday, June 8, 2:00pm
I Love Italian Everything 