A successful SMS
With SMS – Sotto Mentite Spoglie, last weekend’s box office champion Vincenzo Salemme took the number one spot from George Clooney’s Michael Clayton. Launched last Friday on 340 screens by Medusa Film, the Neapolitan actor-director’s seventh film ended its opening weekend with a €1.2m gross.
These figures have pulled up the entire Italian box office, which came in at €7.3m this week – a 5% increase over last week.
For the second time (since 2002’s Volesse il cielo!) Salemme has not transposed one of his theatrical plays, instead working from a script written specifically for the big screen. The film features two couples, an adulterous act consummated almost by mistake (due to an sms, or text message, sent to the wrong number) and numerous misunderstandings that betray the director’s two theatrical models: “Feydeau and, naturally, Eduardo Scarpetta”.
Starring Salemme and Giorgio Panariello, SMS offers up a Tuscan-Neapolitan duo that may be seen as an update of the unsurpassable prototype of Massimo Troisi and Roberto Benigni in Nothing Left to Do But Cry. However, the actors unanimously agree that their goal “was in no way to emulate two of our untouchable talents, but to unite the sarcasm of Tuscan comedy with the melancholy of Neapolitan comedy”. They are flanked by Enrico Brignano, who adds some Roman humour to the mix.
Produced by Medusa for approximately €3.5m, SMS is an “atlas” of Italian-style comedy looking to please audiences across the entire peninsula.
(Translated from Italian)
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