06/03/2014 - Popular actor Claudio Amendola takes his first steps as director with a comedy about sports, redemption and friendship starring Edoardo Leo. From today in 200 cinemas.

After Smetto quando voglio [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sydney Sibilia
film profile], Edoardo Leo is returning to the big screen as a man of the people, bringing together a diverse cast around an ill-advised project. This is the base story for La mossa del pinguino [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a directing debut for Claudio Amendola, for whom Leo did not just star, but also co-wrote the script. If Roman actor Sydney Sibilia’s directing debut had a band of university colleagues become drug dealers, this new comedy, hitting Italian cinemas today sees Leo literally throw himself in an Olympian pursuit: training a curling team, taking part in the Winter Games and trying to turn his and his companions’ lives around.

La mossa del pinguino is more classical visually than it is in its narrative, throwing four men, who are slight outsiders, together after they randomly discover curling and convince each other they could get to the Olympics. Leading them is Bruno (Leo), an eternal Peter Pan who is married with a son, a great dreamer who has no money and cries when he sees an athlete win a medal. Salvatore (Ricky Memphis) is his best friend, indolent and sarcastic, but loving, with an ill father he takes care of. And then there are Neno and Ottavio (Antonello Fassari and Ennio Fantastichini): the first is a former gang leader and billiard player who lives on the memory of glories past and wears a flashy headpiece, the other is a retired policeman, ill-tempered, solitary and with a great talent for boules.

The foursome train where they can, with Rome hardly being the best place for winter sports. And instead of the usual granite stones with which curling is normally played, they use pressure cookers filled with anything they can find, including sometimes soup. Will our unlikely heroes manage to qualify for the Olympics? We will only find out after undergoing some lengthy time with Bruno’s family problems, after he is left by his wife Eva (Francesca Inaudi) and she discovers that the money she had set aside to pay rent has been used to buy curling equipment. One of the film’s side stories is describing a passion for sport, or in Leo’s words, “explaining to our wives why once a week we play football with our friends like it was a Champions League game.”

Why not a film on football then? “I no longer love football the way I used to,” Amendola says, despite being a Rome team supporter who says his debut film was inspired by Full Monty. “Too much business, violence and scandals. I like sports’ aura. Those disciplines where you work for four years in order to get half an extra centimetre.” La mossa del pinguino is a film on dreams and the will to win, in spite of daily problems. And for those who are not used to getting much from life, one point is sometimes enough.

La mossa del pinguino was produced by Dap Italy with support from the Turin Piedmont Film Commission (part of the film was filmed in Pinerolo) and MiBAC, among others. Videa is distributing it in 200 cinemas. 

(Translated from Italian)