On 8 January, in the immediate aftermath of the holidays, making up for all the real and metaphorical sugar imbibed over the festive period, Matteo Oleotto’s almost-Christmassy dark comedy, The Last Slap, is hitting Italian cinemas by way of Tucker Film. Presented in a world premiere within Rome Film Fest’s Alice nella Città line-up back in October and the winner of two awards for its young yet powerful lead actress Adalgisa Manfrida, this second feature film by the Gorizia-born director who first turned heads in Venice 12 years ago with his staggering debut work Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot [+lee también:
crítica
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entrevista: Matteo Oleotto
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It’s cold, the fridge is empty, and money is in short supply. Petra (Adalgisa Manfrida) and Jure (Massimiliano Motta) live in a caravan surrounded by snow and every day they visit their mother (Rossana Mortara) in a dementia care home. Petra is hard, direct and often coarse; Jure is good-natured but not very bright and he dreams of taking his mother to see the sea. The two of them travel around their village eating whatever they find and scraping money together through odd jobs. One of these involves placing bets for other people (in this case, for Petra’s love interest, Nevio, played by Davide Iacopini) on clandestine slap fights unfolding in a former mine.

But the real turning point which just might help them escape that “shitty place” seems to come with the disappearance of Marlowe, the beloved dog belonging to a local elderly lady called Ines (Carla Manzon) who promises a handsome reward for anyone who finds her hound. It doesn’t take long for the duo to plan a genuine human abduction involving a demand for thousands of euros: “People are rich here and they’ll pay for their loved ones”, Petra concludes without hesitation, while her brother worries “that’s not a nice thought”. Naturally, between doubts and misunderstandings, things will go wrong.

Written by three pairs of hands coming courtesy of Oleotto, Pier Paolo Piciarelli and Salvatore De Mola, the screenplay deftly interweaves the siblings’ unfortunate fate with that of the other characters, who end up triggering chain reactions and making everything worse, especially Ines’ grandson, Nicola (Giovanni Ludeno), who’s crazy about true crime podcasts and who’s determined to solve the case of the missing hound (the film also stars Giuseppe Battiston as the parish priest who coordinates the search for Marlowe).

“I shot The Last Slap with the Coen brothers’ Fargo in mind. Not so much in terms of narrative complexity or the crime side of things, but for the unbreakable bond between the protagonists and their environment”, explained Oleotto, who’s back to depicting the provinces and its strange inhabitants, this time with the addition of snow and glacial cold, reflected in the chapped lips and frostbitten cheeks of his protagonists. It’s impossible not to grow attached to this brother and sister who have to fight for their survival on a daily basis while everyone else is obsessing over decorating trees, buying nonsense and dressing up as Father Christmas. It’s a film which offers a healthy counterpoint to Christmas, and which unexpectedly ends up warming our hearts.

The Last Slap was produced by Staragara IT in co-production with SPOK Films and RTV Slovenia, in collaboration with RAI Cinema and in association with Transmedia, Mompracem and Lokafilm.