05/09/2008

At a festival where the average film length is two hours, a 62-minute-long, low budget feature arouses curiosity. Pinuccio Lovero - sogno di una morte di mezz'estate (“Pinuccio Lovero - Dream of a Midsummer Death”) tells the story of a 40-year-old man who has always dreamed of working as a gravedigger and is finally employed as cemetery keeper in a small village in Puglia. It’s a shame nobody dies and the days slip by with nothing to do.

It seems like little more than a joke. But director Pippo Mezzapesa – whose previous work includes documentaries, music videos and shorts (including Come a Cassano, which is very popular on YouTube) – has managed to develop material that would barely have sufficed for a short. The film explores the deep South and the idealism of a little man with so many hopes, who plays the trumpet in the village band, composes strange songs, carves marble tombstones and awaits his first funeral.

Mezzapesa uses elements of Italian-style comedy and the audience laughs, especially at Pinuccio’s involuntary jokes about death, which belie his philosophy (and that of everyone): let it come, but as late as possible, and may it take someone else first.

(Translated from Italian)