
Niccolò Vivaldi is a cello player and he plays in Arena di Verona Orchestra. But he is not the first and neither the second cello. He is frustrated. Nobody can remember his face, nor his name. Niccolò is married to Costanza, who is really beautiful and he takes some pictures of her naked. Later he shows the pictures to a friend and so he feels better. He starts to write a comic opera called “Il merlo maschio” only to discover later he had written Rossini’s “La gazza ladra”. To maintain his self-esteem he can only show his wife…
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Tag Archives: Italy
Il richiamo / The Call (2009) Stefano Pasetto, Sandra Ceccarelli, Francesca Inaudi, César Bordón, Drama, Romance

Stefano Pasetto’s finely balanced tale of two women from different generations and very different sensibilities provides a surprising answer. Frustrated in each of their relationships, the two women get together and leave town, boldly striking out on their own and forming an indelible bond despite their many differences. This is only the beginning of a wonderfully liberating experience that defies narrative expectations.
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Factotum (2005) Bent Hamer, Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Self-declared aspiring writer Hank Chinaski has neither qualifications, ambition nor ethics. Any dead-end job he lands is soon lost through laziness or mischief. His relationship with fellow deadbeat Jan gets strained to crisis through her insecurity, so he even gives up betting on horses which brought in easy money.
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La persona de Leo N. / The Person de Leo N. (2005) Alberto Vendemmiati, Documentary

As a twelve-year-old boy, Nicola de Leo already knew she wanted to become a woman. Today, the now forty-year-old transsexual lives in Venice and has changed her name to Nicole. She has undergone a hormone treatment and grown breasts, but she still lives inside the body of a middle-aged man, including a penis, a beard and a substantial Adam’s apple. This is why Nicole is applying for a sex change through official channels. ‘I never thought it would be so hard. I thought making the decision was enough,’ she says. During five tense years, Nicole fights her emotional and physical struggle in the presence of director Alberto Vendemmiati’s camera. Working as an actress, a seller of carnival masks and a prostitute, she finances her cosmetic treatments and looks forward to the subsidised sex change operation. Meanwhile, she turns to her elderly mother for support, who has a hard time accepting that her son will soon be a daughter.
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Nenè (1978) Salvatore Samperi, Leonora Fani, Tino Schirinzi, Paola Senatore, Drama

It’s the late 1940s in Italy. WWII is over, but society the world over still bears its scars. In a remote countryside, one family of four occupies a big villa: a young boy, his older sister and their parents. Ju (Sven Valsecchi) is a cute and innocent boy – curious like most kids his age about such things as love, kisses, women’s breasts and generally the difference between sexes. When his cousin, a 14-year-old orphaned girl, moves in with the family, Ju discovers an opportunity to satisfy his increasing curiosity about the female sex. But it all comes at a price…
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La faute à Fidel! / Blame it on Fidel (2006) Julie Gavras, Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, Stefano Accorsi, Drama, History

Hello, my name is Anna and I am nine years old. I wish you had known me before – I mean before my aunt Marga and my cousin Pilar came to my parents’house -, I was such a happy little girl. Before their coming life was a bed of roses. Of course my little brother could be a pain in the neck – little brothers always are, aren’t they? – but there was that wonderful big house, there was my Cuban-born nanny who cooked so well, there was the bath before dinner, not to mention this wonderful catechism class at the catholic school. But they did come, those Spanish intruders. And now never heard before names like “Franco”, “Allende”, “Women’s Lib”, “abortion”, the lot, have got into my life. Daddy and Mummy have suddenly become “communists”, although this a term that Bon Papa and Bonne Maman (my grandparents from Bordeaux, in fact) just hate. Because of the intruders not only did we move to a tiny apartment but the place is invaded day and night by “barbudos” (bearded men). No more bath before …
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Le Plaisir (et ses petits tracas) (1998) Nicolas Boukhrief, Mathieu Kassovitz, Vincent Cassel, Julie Gayet, Drama

“Pleasure (and its little inconveniences)” In Europe today, as chance, deceits and desires run their course, the army conscript meets the nurse, the nurse gets back together with the comedian, the comedian meets the married woman, the married woman gets back together with the VIP, the VIP meets the mad dog, the mad dog gets back together with his old friend Loulou and Loulou, naturally, meets Jack the Ripper…
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Uomini e cieli / Men and Skies (1947) Francesco De Robertis, Giulio Faido, Lamberto Baviera, Vasco Marlia, Drama, Romance

Four war pilots that have been fighting together go seperate ways and meet up again years later.
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Le Orme / Footprints on the Moon (1975) Luigi Bazzoni, Mario Fanelli, Florinda Bolkan, Peter McEnery, Klaus Kinski, Mystery, Thriller

A woman is tormented by strange dreams of astronauts on the moon. She visits a deserted seaside town whose inhabitants know her even though she does not know them.
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Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1974) Dick Randall, Rossano Brazzi, Michael Dunn, Edmund Purdom, Horror

See the battle of the monsters, Goliath versus Ook! “South Pacific” star Rossano Brazzi plays the crackpot Frankenstein whose latest creature is a goofy, dome-headed neanderthal cleverly named Goliath. Typical of monsters, Goliath has the hots for Frankenstein’s new squeeze, Krista, who likes to bathe in milk. When Genz, a horny necrophile dwarf, is expelled from the castle, he promptly makes friends with Ook, a second neanderthal just passing through town. Out for revenge, Genz lets Goliath loose to go head to pointy-head with Ook in a good old-fashioned monster rumble.
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