ST. ALi Italian Film Festival 2022 Film Review - Belli Ciao
Images courtesy of the ST. ALi Italian Film Festival.
Belli Ciao is a 2021 buddy comedy starring Pio and Amadeo, a comic duo who play two late-millennial southerners reuniting as adults to save their town from losing all their young people. In the time since their high school graduation, Pio becomes a famous economist, while Amadeo drops out of medical school and becomes a medical equipment salesman. This sets up this film’s main comedic premise to be a vehicle for all types of wacky bits, and if you are content with following along, you should enjoy this movie.
I issue a fair warning, however, that for general Australian audiences there are a lot of cultural references that you may not understand. I was just able to follow the punchlines by taking cues from the Italian diaspora sitting in the Australian premiere night audience. Most of the humour comes from the north and south cultural divides of Italy, linguistic differences such as the use of “top” and “adoro” in Milanese Italian and the use of Old Latin by the municipality, among other things. Looking past the immediate nuances of the Intra-Italic cultural divide, we can relate to some elements of the story’s City Mouse, Country Mouse archetype. Amadeo’s social unfamiliarity causes him to force meandering conversations on Pio’s unwitting business partners, and feed desserts with pig’s blood to vegans (a southern specialty called Sanguinaccio dolce). Tonally, in this way it sometimes feels a little bit like a slower version of Hot Fuzz, or ABC TV’s Rosehaven. There’s also a bit of humour poking fun at millennials, through Pio's metropolitan lifestyle; his Lamborghini Urus SUV, which is too wide for southern roads; his materialistic, influencer partner and her shut-in, gamer son. These boomer jokes are about as cheap as it is when it is done in Anglophone comedy.
The conclusion of the film can be summarised in the billboard gag, “Ti Venisse Un Occidente! Torna a vivera da noi”, where Pio and Amadeo finally arrive at marketing the south as a seachange to an idyllic, simple paradise. Distributor Palace Films’ subtitles translate this to “First World Malaise is Real! Let yourself live”, which sounds a little more heavy and nativist than the Italian would suggest (it seems to be a play-on-words gag, according to google translate). Belli Ciao isn’t the most high-brow of satires, and in some parts the laughs are a bit sparse, but there are a couple of genuine ones for sure.
Check out Belanco’s Blog and Letterboxd.
Belli Ciao screened on the opening night of the 2022 ST. ALi Italian Film Festival. For tickets and more info, click here.