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FILMS / REVIEWS Italy / Slovenia

Review: What A Life!

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- Giuseppe Battiston steps behind the camera to offer up this feel-good movie loosely based on Flaubert’s far more acerbic story Bouvard and Pécuchet

Review: What A Life!
Rolando Ravello and Giuseppe Battiston in What A Life!

Gustave Flaubert meets Carlo Mazzacurati in What A Life! [+see also:
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, the first film directed by actor Giuseppe Battiston which is hitting Italian cinemas from 19 January, distributed by Adler Entertainment, and which is inspired by the great nineteenth century French writer’s unfinished novel Bouvard and Pécuchet. It tells the story of two solitary men who meet, make great plans together and are brought crashing back down to Earth, without ever losing their optimism; a modern-day fable boasting a light yet poetic style reminiscent of the late Paduan director who gave us La sedia della felicità [+see also:
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, La passione [+see also:
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and The Right Distance [+see also:
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(three films starring Battiston himself, among others).

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This portrait painted by Battiston (who wrote the film subject and screenplay alongside Marco Pettenello) is far more generous in tone than Flaubert’s book, on which it is loosely based. He depicts “two positivity warriors”, in his own words, two simple-minded and naive city men who dream of changing their lives, who move to the country and who believe that anything is possible: the important thing is not settling and acquiring a bit of knowledge. While the author behind Madame Bovary mocked obtuse encyclopedism with intense ferocity, Battiston treats his characters with affection and without judging them, because the inhabitants of the small village in north-eastern Italy which the two of them move to, already have this in hand, shouting “mona!” (“stupid” in the Venetian dialect) whenever they see them in the street.

The lead pair are played by Giuseppe Battiston and actor-director Rolando Ravello (the latter directed Battison in È per il tuo bene [+see also:
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). The former is a widowed and impassioned librarian who never misses an opportunity to dissuade his customers from wasting time with substandard books; the latter is an electronics expert who reads gas meters for a living and still lives with his mother, who would much rather be sharing her home with her new boyfriend. They’re both called Fausto, and their surnames are Biasutti and Perbellini respectively. They meet at a gathering for aspiring photographers, and they insist on addressing one another with the formal Italian pronoun “Lei”, even when, tired of their grey lives, they embark on the hapless project of going to live in the countryside together and living off the land. But despite their best efforts and good intentions, surviving in this new Arcadian dimension turns out to be far more complicated than first thought.

A light, gentle comedy about a pair of likeable losers who never lose heart, the film would definitely have benefited from a more acerbic approach – the book on which it is based offered plenty of scope for this. In its current state the movie risks slipping on by without leaving its mark, if not proving slightly boring on several occasions. It’s nonetheless a triumph of good-feeling and an ode to willpower in which Rolando Ravello’s performance proves especially measured and nuanced.

What A Life! is produced by Rosamont (Battiston’s firm, which has previously produced The Macaluso Sisters [+see also:
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]
and Emma Dante’s upcoming movie Misericordia) in league with RAI Cinema and Staragara, in collaboration with Minimum Fax Media and Tucker Film. International sales fall to Fandango Sales.

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(Translated from Italian)

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