the review of the film with Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi

Ten years after its release, Don’t be mean by Claudio Caligari, starring Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi, returns to cinemas on 27, 28 and 29 October distributed by Adler Entertainment. An event that is not only a tribute to a work that has become the symbol of a generation, but also an opportunity to remember Caligari’s visionary strength and the legacy that his cinema continues to transmit to today’s audience. This is how we talked about it ten years ago.

The roundabout of Ostia, “the jelly”. Claudio Caligari it immediately takes us back to where it all began, in 1983, with Toxic love. This time it is 1995, Vittorio (Alessandro Borghi) is eating the ice cream, and it is his lifelong friend, Cesare (Luca Marinelli), who makes him “weigh”. Vittorio however, unlike his predecessors Enzo and Ciopper, has already “turned around”: it is no longer a time for heroin, we are in another era, that of synthetic highs (tablets) and compulsive snorting.

Children of the street, the two only know one modus vivendi, made up of nights in discos, powerful cars, alcohol, cocaine dealing… Until Vittorio meets Linda (Roberta Mattei), a single mother, and decides to change his life. He starts working as a worker and also tries to involve Cesare, who is now dating his friend’s ex (Silvia D’Amico) and dreams of building a family with her. But the call of the road, for him, will once again prevail over good intentions.

Third feature film by Claudio Caligari in 32 years of career, Don’t be mean (written together with Giordano Meacci and Francesca Serafini) sees the director return behind the camera seventeen years later The smell of the nighta 1998 masterpiece starring Valerio Mastandrea. And thanks to the efforts of the latter (here as producer) the new film by Caligari – already very ill, then died once filming was completed, before post-production – saw the light.

Imperfect and beautiful, Don’t be mean (easy to say, more difficult to achieve in certain corners of the world) represents the right synthesis, the ideal middle ground between Toxic love e The smell of the night: the usual “urgency” of wanting to tell the heart of a period and a context through a “small” story, once again thanks to the impeccable direction of the actors. The driving force of everything, after all, is right there, in the incredible performance of Marinelli and Borghi, in the alchemy of a bond that tears the screen with violence.

After the “rota” of the 80s (Toxic love) and the “retaliatory” criminal actions of the village policeman The smell of the night (set between the end of the ’70s and the beginning of the ’80s) Caligari focuses on other obsessions, taking us back to the mid-’90s also to remind us how “synthetic” degradation began to creep in, the hallucination of a “good life” that could be achieved with the least possible effort: “What is it? An epidemic of work?!?” thunders the Ugly (Alessandro Bernardini) when he sees Vittorio and Cesare return from the construction site.

Absolute protagonists, of course, but surrounded by a crowd of supporting actors who finally bring the “character actors” back to the center of an Italian film: this is also the great merit of Caligari. Suspended in a narrative that may seem timeless, a director with whom Italian cinema has more than a few debts.

And which ends its journey where it began, in Venice, in 1983 Toxic love was awarded as best first work. Out of competition (at the 2015 Biennale, ed.), and from a certain point of view this is perhaps right: custom-built, not cataloguable. Master.