Buddy comedies have been about for a long time – think Abbott & Costello; Bob Hope & Bing Crosby; Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. Have I missed anyone?
Oh yeah about another 100,000 from all countries providing world cinema.
Pio D’Antica and Amadeo Grieco don’t add much to the genre but they have co-written (with director Gennaro Nunzianti) a fairly funny film about the classic divide between Italy’s north and south.
If you don’t know, the north is corporate, industrial, successful, global; the south is provincial, backward, charming, poor.
Belli ciao (2022) takes this premise and wrings it for laughs as two little kids who both knew what they wanted as children – Pio to be a corporate whiz-kid; Amadeo a doctor – reunite after decades apart.
The two have grown up in Sant Agata d’Puglia but Pio has escaped to Milano to make his fortune and Amadeo has stayed but not reached the heights he hoped. He sells medical equipment like wheelchairs and surgical shoes.
Pio’s exodus is a familiar tale in Italy and Belli ciao uses many of its parts.
Sant Agata d’Puglia has had a “brain drain” and the all the bright young minds have left for the north to find work and wealth. “We only have one left, Pottito”, explains a councillor to the mayor as he produces a dim-looking nerd at his side. If the town doesn’t do something quickly there will be nothing left.
Enter Pio with his financing and all looks good but the interest rate on the loan is considered too high. Amadeo is sent to Milano to try and shave some points.
However, it’s not all clover. Pio’s office has been raided by police because he has swindled one too many Italian citizens, his girlfriend Elettra (Lorena Cacciatori) cannot handle the home spun behaviour of their new guest; and this village bumpkin in the big city looks naive but he is one jump ahead of the rest.
The jokes are cheesy but it’s a lot of fun and the viewer gets the idea of Pio and Amadeo’s humour when reading their background.
The two are Italy’s most popular double act and perform on stage, television and film as well as creating books. But read the plot line of their previous cinematic effort, Amici come now (2014) and you realise Belli ciao isn’t much of a leap in eight years: “They go to Amsterdam. Oops hookers. But he is charming. Uses kids. Marriage saved.”
In Belli ciao, Amadeo saves Pio from his wanton life. The two friends set up a group session in their village where they counsel Milan victims and help them return to the simple life they should have been enjoying all along.
The message of Belli ciao is that both styles of life have good and bad points. Perhaps the disconnect has been overblown?
Cute.
3.5
I WRIGHT 