22/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Italian director Francesco Sossai morphs into Aki Kaurismäki, and delivers a loveable ode to drunken encounters and that first hungover cigarette

Pierpaolo Capovilla, Filippo Scotti and Sergio Romano in The Last One for the Road

Italy has never looked more Finnish than in the loveable dramedy The Last One for the Road [+see also:
trailer
film profile], shown in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. It’s not like Aki Kaurismäki invented drinking, or drinking on screen, but director Francesco Sossai shares his affection for the lost souls in leather jackets, with hair that’s a bit too long and moustaches that are a bit too old-fashioned, à la Matti Pellonpää, begging the universe to give them an excuse for one more beer – the last one, we promise.

Carlobianchi and Doriano (Sergio Romano and Pierpaolo Capovilla) are just like that, and they like their routine: drinking, chatting, realising they have discovered “something amazing about life” and immediately forgetting what it was. Their stories are fun, albeit probably not entirely true. They are also old, and that’s the problem. These two are like a veteran couple, going through the same beats when asked, once again, how they met. They know the drill, and they know how to deliver a joke, but they also need a new audience.

Ask, and it shall be given to you: enter Giulio (Filippo Scotti), a shy student who doesn’t know what he wants in life and certainly doesn’t know how to get the girl. There’s so much potential here – no wonder Carlobianchi and Doriano pounce on him like starved vultures. They have wisdom to share (although they are not sure what it was) and life lessons to teach (although they need a drink first). But what they can really offer, right the fuck now, is an adventure and a mini-road trip.

And it's a trip that’s well worth taking, even though it’s a modest film in a modest, grey setting, and that’s mostly because of these madmen. After years of overindulging, Carlobianchi and Doriano can spot a non-alcoholic brew right away because it “tastes strange”, and probably so does water to them. They don’t care about providing meaningful conversation – “Who the fuck invented the shrimp cocktail?” “Some nut in the ‘90s” – but they do care about having one. Sossai’s film is openly nostalgic in this regard. Do people still hang around bars this way, talk to strangers and annoy them, without having anywhere to be or anyone to call? One would like to think so. Even though – it needs to be said – drunk men are always nicer in films than in real life.

Despite the age gap between Giulio and his new buddies, their resistance to the new and his resistance to letting loose, Sossai resists the urge to preach. Lessons will be learnt, ovviamente, but not every encounter needs a conclusion, and cinema can handle secrets that only its characters can hear – see also Lost in Translation. This is how it goes during these endless, hazy nights: when something significant happens, it’s hard to say what it was, even when everyone eventually – and unfortunately – sobers up. But don’t worry, as if needed, all you need to do is go back to the bar and nod as its regulars say: “We know fuck all, yet we know everything.”

The Last One for the Road was produced by Italy’s Vivo Film and RAI Cinema, and Germany’s Maze Pictures. Its international sales have been entrusted to Lucky Number.