Non essere cattivo (2015) Don't Be Bad

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Non essere cattivo (2015) Don't Be Bad

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A story set in the 90s and in the outskirts of Rome to Ostia, the same places of the films of Pasolini. His characters, in the '90s, seem to belong to a world that revolves around hedonism. A world where money, luxury cars, night clubs, cocaine and synthetic drugs are easy to run. A world in which Vittorio and Cesare, in their early twenty, act in search of their success. Initiation for their existence has a very high cost and Vittorio, to save himself, abandons Cesare, who instead will inexorably sink. The bond that unites them is so strong that Vittorio really never shall abandon his friend, always hoping to be able to look to the future with new eyes. Together.

The main characters, Cesare and Vittorio, are played superbly by the two young actors Luca Marinelli (The Solitude of Prime Numbers [+]) and Alessandro Borghi, flanked by the equally excellent Silvia D'Amico and Roberta Mattei. Caligari leads them through the living hell of ecstasy pills, frenzied car races, scuffles in nightclubs, petty crime and ill-advised friendships. Their wild eyes virtually pop out of their sockets as they are gripped by hallucinations. That is until Vittorio says enough is enough, dumps his junkie girlfriend for an unmarried mother and starts working as a bricklayer on a building site. On the other hand, Cesare does not manage to break free from this self-destructive path, and his friend tries to rescue him, in vain.

It would not be so outrageous to bring up the name of Pier Paolo Pasolini in relation to Caligari’s films, because the settings, the places, the language, the dreams and the frustrations of these working-class suburban kids are the same as those found in the literary and cinematic works of PPP, albeit brought up to date over the decades. Just like Pasolini, Caligari has a really affectionate way of looking at things. We laugh and are moved in this "story of pure love", as Valerio Mastandrea, who is accompanying the film to the festival, described it. "I will greatly miss Claudio Caligari's films," he said. "Those themes that are the same ones as Martin Scorsese's, Brian De Palma's, Francis Ford Coppola's…"

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Non essere cattivo (2015) Don't Be Bad

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