Guess who’s coming to dinner
A sentimental comedy, as declared in the film’s subtitle, with a touch of sarcasm à la Pupi Avati: the director’s new film, La cena per farli conoscere (lit., “The Dinner For Them to Meet”) looks at the crisis of the traditional family through the story of an unsuccessful actor (Diego Abatantuono) and his three daughters, by three different women, who live throughout Europe and barely know each other: Ines (Ines Sastre), Clara (Vanessa Incontrada) and Betty (Violante Placido). Together, the sisters decide to find their father a companion (Francesca Neri), who has recently attempted suicide.
Produced by Antonio Avati in collaboration with Medusa Film and Sky, the film will be released next Friday on 250 screens.
In Cena per farli conoscere, Avati does not only examine the family, however. "Through cinema I had fun writing about its little sister, television, of which I have a very relative opinion", said the director. Abatantuono, in fact, plays a B-movie actor whose character on a never-ending soap opera is becoming increasingly more marginal.
Sinking even lower, the actor agrees to take part in a reality show set in the sewers of Milan, not unlike the latest edition of Big Brother. Avati does not hide his contempt for television, "hugely responsible for the entire country’s culture and moral decay, with its lust for visibility".
The film is beset with references to great directors such as Pietro Germi, Mario Monicelli and Dino Risi. As well as a master of mainstream cinema, Sergio Corbucci, "whom I never met,” said Avati, “and whom I railed against as a young man of the 60s and 70s. But I now look back with nostalgia at 1960s cinema, when they used to make a film a day".
Moreover, returning to his early passions (such as The House With the Laughing Windows), the director is currently working on a thriller, The Hideout (Il nascondiglio), which was shot in Davenport, Iowa, in English and with an international cast, including Italy’s Laura Morante and US actors Treat Williams and Burt Young (Rocky Balboa).
(Translated from Italian)
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