Reviews

This is an extraordinary movie about the everyday life of a group of heroin addicts in suburban Rome in the early eighties. The non-professional actors are real addicts, and this gives to the story a sense of reality that is tragic and poetic at the same time. Their sense of humanity and freshness, despite the horror of addiction, is unique and moving. Unfortunately many of them were killed by heroin or aids in the years following the movie. The screenplay was written by the director Claudio Caligari together with Guido Blumir, a sociologist who worked on drug-related issues for a long time. The direction is brave and clever, with a focus on human substance more than anything else. One wonders why Italian cinema is not able to produce meaningful movies like this any more.

Before watching this movie I was skeptical about such an ambitious program: depicting the most recent Italian history through the eyes of the Carati family. To some extent I was right, this is not a perfect movie. There are flaws, ingenuities, some moments are kitsch and too obvious, and you can tell it was prepared for the TV. But it has the very important merit of portraying lives, attitudes, beliefs of Italy that have been missing from the screen for a long time. Some parts of the movie are very intense, delicately touching. This is the true country where I grew up. Experiences that are very close to mines. Similar faces, similar hopes. Very far away from everything you would see on Italian TV these days. Very different from the ugliness of contemporary Italian society.

A part of the country whose dignity is constantly neglected by stereotypes, but that still represents the best of it.

This is a movie where a director tries to be Kieslowski without success. I almost falled asleep trying to catch what was going on during all this kitch pointless too much ordinary crying around. Moreover, what's bad about wanting to fight for your rights?

The community could have stayed together in doing that.

The acting of the girl on the wheel chair is the only thing that i save.

This is the classic case of a great story that does not make it to become a great film. The movie is boring, predictable and pointless. The soundtrack is poor and disturbing. The only two things that I save are Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne and the photography. I wonder what was the director thinking when he was shooting this. Probably this is not his genre. Basically he just gives you the chance of seeing an actor that pretends to be mad. For more than an hour and an half.

Page 73 is an extraordinary short movie on the power of dreaming and the archetype of the quest for love. Excellent black and white photography, excellent direction by Jeff Darling and superb acting by the whole cast, it is a must see. It reminded me of the best Fellini, but it is such an original movie that it is characterised by its own aesthetics.

The story revolves around a petrol station where Danny boy, the main character, is employed. Danny likes to dream, in a claustrophobic world that does not fit him. Sometimes dreams can generate frustration, sometimes they trigger revolutions. It's all in Danny's eyes.