Verdone’s fairy tale on the vulgarity around us
Thirteen years after Viaggi di nozze, and almost 30 after his debut feature Fun is Beautiful, with Grande grosso e… Verdone [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“Big, Fat and…Verdone”) Carlo Verdone returns to the characters, and structure (in three episodes), that made him so popular on the big and little screens.
However, times have changed, so “we extracted the DNA of my usual characters, adapting them to today’s reality,” said the actor-director, “to shoot a comedy that is anything but polite, which reflects the current cynical and mean climate”.
The first episode, which also stars renowned television cabaret personality Geppi Cucciari, is “a surreal fairy tale on the innocence of the family on the vulgarity surrounding it”, and the other two also reflect upon overwhelming coarseness besieging contemporary society.
Nevertheless, the fools are not (only) Rome’s “urban rednecks” that in the final chapter invade a fancy hotel in Taormina. “The main character of that episode, Moreno, is the most honest character of the film, crushed as he is by feelings of inadequacy with respect to others and his son, who is more mature than he is,” explained Verdone.
Instead, the director is ruthless with Callisto, the powerful university professor of the second part, who displays power, culture and etiquette yet tyrannises his son, maid and various prostitutes. “The professor is a lugubrious, sinister character,” he said. “Screenwriters Piero De Bernardi, Pasquale Plastino and I wrote a very literary, almost horror episode. We wanted a ‘Jane Eyre-like’ atmosphere, at moments even Hitchcockesque.”
While dominated by the talents of its show-stealing star, the film is also an ensemble piece, featuring Claudia Gerini and young actors Emanuele Propizio and Andrea Miglio Risi, seen respectively in My Brother Is an Only Child and Flying Lessons. After Viaggi di nozze and I’m Crazy About Iris Blond, says Verdone: “This is my third film with [Claudia]. We share the same ironic view of the world.”
Owing much (from its title, proposed by a fan and approved by producer Aurelio De Laurentiis) to the atmospheres of Bianco rosso e Verdone, a smash hit at the Italian box office in 1981, the new Grande grosso e… Verdone will try to repeat that success when Filmauro releases it March 7 on 835 screens.
(Translated from Italian)
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