It takes courage to throw yourself into a big undertaking, and Don Vincezo has courage and perseverance in spades. The small Calabria farmer dreams big and sets his mind on paying the millionaire salary of a Serie A footballer to make him come and play in the amateur team of his modest city. But for his part, what could bring an overpaid and spoiled player to step on a shabby pitch (although one with a spectacular seaside view) on the margins of the world? The answer is a good dose of humility, which for many, in today’s world of football all about business and spectacle, indeed wouldn’t hurt. This is what occurs in U.S. Palmese, the new film from the Manetti brothers, who after the not very successful trilogy Diabolik [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] have decided to try themselves at a genre they hadn’t yet explored, that of the sport comedy. The film debuted at the 19th Rome Film Fest, in the Grand Public section.

“For us, a sport film is a film where a dribble, a successful pass or a spectacular overturn carry the story forward, produce real emotions”, declare the director brothers, and indeed it is the football played that is the heart of this fable, which talks about the lost passion of a champion, lost amongst the mountains of money and an exasperated individualism, and the great ambition of a man from the South of Italy who will stop at nothing. Shot between Calabria, Milan and Paris, U.S. Palmese brings together the destinies of Etienne Morville (the Liege actor Blaise Afonso), a capricious attacker for Milan with an easy punch and in the middle of a crisis of reputation, and of Don Vincenzo (Rocco Papaleo), a retired farmer determined to take advantage of his free time to organise a mega collect of funds and scrape up five million euros knocking on the doors of the 18 thousands citizens of Palmi. The objective is to hire Morville himself, who in the meantime has been dropped by his club, and improve the fortunes of their favourite team, the Palmese.

Written by the Manetti brothers with Luna Gualano-Emiliano Rubbi (Go Home - A casa loro [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], La guerra del Tiburtino III [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]), the film presents the formula, revisited several times, of the superior outsider catapulted into a working reality far below his expectations and potential (come to mind, still in the football environment, L’arbitro [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Paolo Zucca
fiche film] by Paolo Zucca, and more recently Next Goal Wins by Taika Waititi). The filmmaker brothers sign here one of their most personal films (Palmi is the hometown of their mother, who has since passed away, and they know it very well), but one expected a touch more originality from them. Instead, the film proceeds in rather predictable directions. The film remains nevertheless a pleasant comedy about the purity of sport, well packaged and with the right mix of grotesque and good sentiments (even the inevitable LGBT quota is satisfying, with Don Vincenzo’s daughter played by Giulia Maenza), which has all the cards in hand to make its way into the heart of the general public.

U.S. Palmese is a Mompracem production with Rai Cinema, in association with Loka Film. The film will be released in Italian theatres on 20 March 2025 through 01 Distribution.