LOADING
Directed by Ettore Scola | 115 minutes | 15+ | 50th Anniversary |
4:00pm Sunday, 17 May | Balam Balam Place - Cinema 2 | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes
Money can’t buy happiness for Rome’s unhappiest family, in Ettore Scola’s grimy tragicomedy - the Italian Pink Flamingos!
Protagonist and papa Giacinto (Nino Manfredi) has lost an eye in an industrial accident. He believes his dozens of kids and grandkids, embittered wife and new sex worker GF want to get their mitts on his sweet insurance money. He’s probably right, but being miserly and abusive to them doesn’t help - especially when they’re all living under one crumbling roof, out of work, space and love in a Puglia shantytown.
Scola is pitiless to his impoverished characters, chucking Italian neo-realism in the bin with each revolted characterisation. It’s a manic and mean family portrait of life on the margins - but cmon, would you watch a film about people who are Pretty, Clean and Good??
SIMILAR: Desperate Living, Shameless, Pixote, Dodes’ka-den, Julien Donkeyboy
"What’s the lesson? That you should never allow yourself to be born into deprivation? Thanks a lot, but say you are: Scola doesn’t seem to have a clue what you should do then." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Morning Herald
"the kind of thing that would be too tragic if it weren’t so funny." - Rizki, Letterboxd
CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Violence, animal violence
Country: Italy
Year: 1976
Language: Italian