08/05/2024 - This debut feature film written by, directed by and starring Filippo Barbagallo is a light-hearted yet insufficiently sharp depiction of an emotionally immature young man

A debut feature film written by, directed by and starring Filippo Barbagallo, True Blue [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is hitting Italian cinemas on 9 May via Vision Distribution following its premiere in Rome Film Fest’s Freestyle section. Barbagallo is the son of producer Angelo Barbagallo who founded the historic firm Sacher Film in the 1980s, together with Nanni Moretti. Indeed, there are faint echoes of Moretti’s first film in True Blue, whose original Italian title [Troppo azzuro] is taken from one of Italy’s most famous songs, Azzurro, composed by Paolo Conte and Vito Pallavicini. Indeed, the song might be seen as a poetic palimpsest of the movie, even if the latter doesn’t advance at the same 155-beats-per-minute rate as the track itself. But the real heart and soul of True Blue resides in Gianni Di Gregorio’s “artistic consultancy”, as it’s described in the opening credits.

The protagonist of the movie is Dario (Barbagallo himself), an adolescent in the body of a 28-year-old man whose blue eyes are framed by glasses, who’s (still) studying architecture in Rome and who (still) lives with - and is fussed over by - his parents (Valerio Mastandrea and Valeria Milillo). He’s your typical, anthropological “clumsy manchild with an air of whimsy, tormented by little neuroses and afflicted with serious emotional immaturity”. These natural and irresistible gifts of his first draw the attention of Caterina (Alice Benvenuti), a young woman he has met by chance in the emergency room which he visited after pouring boiling oil onto his own arm, and then Lara (Martina Gatti), the inaccessible girl he’s always liked. With the former, Dario confesses to having never had a relationship. He goes to bed with her, but when it comes to travelling home with her to Rimini, he doesn’t turn up at the train station and he turns off his mobile. Caterina is a restorer who clearly represents a potential new beginning for this young man who is, himself, attached to the reassuring ruins of antiquity, and who prefers to hide away in the island cottage where his progressive middle-class parents are holidaying. Lara, meanwhile, with her free sensuality, represents a more adventurous existence (which, for settled Dario, is to be avoided at all costs), and she’s also the person who has sensed Dario’s undeveloped identity (“adults fight, you know?”, “where do you think you are, a creche??”). But he goes to bed with her, regardless, and buys a ticket to Lisbon. It isn’t hard to guess how it all ends.

Barbagallo tries to hold the viewer’s attention with one or two visual tricks, splitting the screen into 9 frames revealing the naked bodies of these young people in bed, or re-sizing it to mobile phone dimensions, all the while combining Pop X’s lively music with sunny images. A wholly timeless coming-of-age story, the film feels like a younger version of The Salt of Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianni di Gregorio
film profile], but despite employing the same gentle approach, it’s not as sharp or entertaining as the latter. The elderly folk in Gianni Di Gregorio’s film are endearingly irresistible but Barbagallo’s protagonist has the potential to irritate adult audiences whilst appealing to younger viewers. In fact, the film’s distributor is launching the movie with the strapline “If you sometimes feel ‘awkward and needy’ too... True Blue is definitely the film for you”. This jarring awkwardness isn’t really probed by Filippo Barbagallo’s less than blistering screenplay; according to his director’s notes, the story doesn’t “look to surprise audiences at all costs, or to explain anything. It plays things down so as not to annoy viewers, and for modesty’s sake too”. It’s like entering an increasingly fast-paced, bolshy street-market on tiptoes.

True Blue is produced by Elsinore Film together with Wildside and Vision Distribution. The latter are also managing international sales.

(Translated from Italian)