19/12/2013 - After going round various international festivals, Ciro De Caro’s film, an ironic look at a generation trying to get back on its feet, is about to hit movie theatres

Cristian Di Sante and Valerio Di Benedetto in Spaghetti Story

Valerio and Scheggia are friends. They are young and they are broke. The first is an actor, waiting for the break of a lifetime. He makes money being a clown at children’s birthday parties. The second still lives with his grandmother but has very clear ideas about how to solve his financial crisis and unemployment problems: he is a drug dealer. Played by two little known actors, Valerio Di Benedetto and Cristian Di Sante, Valerio and Scheggia are the main characters in Roman Ciro De Caro’s film debut Spaghetti Story [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which after going around a number of international festivals (including Moscow, Reykjavik, Krakow, RIFF in Rome and the San Marino Film Festival, where it won best director), is finally coming out in Italian cinemas on December 19, thanks to Distribuzione Indipendente.

The film also has two equally talented female stars: Serena (Sara Tosti, seen in Giulia non esce la sera [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Giuseppe Piccioni), is a student who would like to have children with Valerio, and Giovanna (Rossella D'Andrea, co-screenwriter of the film with De Caro), is a masseuse who dreams of becoming a Chinese chef and passes her money on to her penniless brother.  But Valerio and Scheggia carry the soul of this bittersweet comedy, with its tight and truthful dialogues and their house, street and restaurant encounters. They paint a lively and disenchanted portrait of a generation with limited prospects, who get back on their feet if they fall and fight to not have their dreams and futures ruined. Neither moralistic, nor rhetorical.  

The film opens a window onto acting as a job. Scenes of auditions are exhilarating: you show up for a part and are given another, you talk about your acting experience but the only thing that counts is being able to speak Roman slang. Your agent doesn’t even respond to your calls. But some are even worse off. When they are dealing with young prostitute Mei Mei, the four main characters, trapped in their own perspectives, will finally manage to look beyond themselves. The fifth character in the film turns out to be a Japanese good luck charm under the form of a cat. We will see him go from one set of hands to another, on the top of cars, in the casting agencies. A surreal touch of colour in so many frames, as well as being the main feature of a promotional urban game through which you can win a couple of tickets (read the rules on the website).

Spaghetti Story will be distributed in 27 movie theatres, including some mainstream and some not, in 13 Italian regions. For a catalogue of listings, click here.

(Translated from Italian)