16/03/2007

A well-structured comedy based on more than just a series of gags, with a story to tell that makes people laugh without resorting to vulgarity. Not bad these days.

Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone, together with director Giambattista Avellino, have succeeded in achieving all of this in their second feature, Il 7 e l'8 (lit. “7 and 8”), produced by Beppe Caschetto for I.T.C. Movie in collaboration with Medusa Film and Sky (and out on 250 screens today).

The two Sicilian comics play out their humour, which is direct and sparse yet full of nuance and Mediterranean flavours, in a story on two newborns switched at birth in their hospital cribs because of their numbers, who as adults discover they have been living each other’s lives.

"The idea came to us”, they explained after the film’s press screening, “while watching Once Upon a Time in America by Sergio Leone, where there’s a scene in which the characters have fun, let’s say, switching around babies in their cribs. So we said to ourselves, ‘Think of how a situation like that could be experienced in real life!’ That’s where the spirit of the film came from".

Against the backdrop of a chaotic but beautiful Palermo, this game of misunderstandings unwinds with a light touch and the right comic tempo for a film that does not pay the price of the comedians’ extensive television and cabaret experience.

(Translated from Italian)