Una vita tranquilla

I watched Una vita tranquillaⁱ mostly by obligation. Toni Servillo's built such immense credit with me I simply can't turn off something starring him -- a distinction indeed very few to date enjoyed (and each meanwhile managed to send it all to rack and ruinⁱⁱ). At the rate his accounts are unfortunately going, it won't be all that long now.

The film is outright idiocy, a plate of nonsense sliced arbitrarily and tied up in knots that want to think themselves ribbons. What, am I supposed to perhaps not notice that the car there depicted would not kill a passenger in the front seat should frontal impact occur (excepting the case where he is shot out the windshield) ? They had ran out of airbags just as they made this (upmarket) car, shrugged and mumbled to themselves "eh, fuck it, what's the worst that can happen" ? Am I supposed to not know that the scene in which (the very adorably credible, by the way) soubrette's doing her duty consists of her on her back (legs neotenically bent at the knee as opposed to expertly straight, held by the soles in her own hands), the young man's left hand wrapped around her throat, her eyes rolling up in her head while he pounds her from above like a divine beast ? Because why, because I've never killed anyone ? Never had sex ? What the fuck ?!

There is no way in the everloving fucking blue heavens that a retired gangster, a retired gangster from twenty years ago whom the (self-evident) son and likely heir of the current boss earnestly respects, steps on that rake. Are you fucking kidding me !? What the shit did he do in that basement for fifteen years, asks a man who has done his share of spending his time in bunkers "because it's wartime, and if you get shot we're all fucked" ? What the fuck did he think about, really, no pre-rendering of anything whatsoever, I'm to believe he's switched camps under Renate'sⁱⁱⁱ loving influence and now behaves exactly ca o pizda proasta ?!

A film made by people who have no fucking idea what anything is, or rather : a film made by people who proceed on the foundationally stupid approach whereby they imagine visual acquaintance, subjectively perceived familiarity equate knowledge. There's no other way to explain the absurd ludicrousness of that scene where a man ever so faintly wipes his fingers and pours drinks after spending however many hours skinning boars. Do you think anyone could drink whatever the fuck he poured ? Alcoholics, maybe. Do you have any idea how boar fat stinks ? Do you know how fucking long it generally took me to clean the curdled blood and the adhesive fat off my hands after skinning one of those damned things ? Are you fucking kidding me ?!

Watching this thing is like spending time with mongoloid kids^iv, playing at architecture or music or whatever the fuck their indistinct moans and garbles are supposed to be. Nothing in particular, really.

1. 2010, by Claudio Cupellini, with Marco Antonio Servillo, Marco D'Amore, Francesco Di Leva, Alice Dwyer. [↩]
2. Kill Bill, for a most memorable instance, was the item that finally took underwater Tarantino's credit with this bank. And all the better it did, too, as it saved me from ulterior horrors such as Kill Bill two, or that idiotic thing with the black dudes that mattered in WW2, good god. [↩]
3. Holy shit that bitch is insufferable, I don't even mean the character, I mean the person, if you know any one anything like that beat the shit out of her, today. I don't mean lightly, I mean break her jaw on both sides and shatter each hip, what the everloving fuck, she has no business ever getting out of quarantine. [↩]
4. Remarkably, both the pair of young men, and the young girl, work quite well and stand up on themselves. I'd much enjoy something in that vein re-shot, by sane directors.

   Consider : two young men, that are visibly (and obviously enough, non-sexually) together, out on a job. One meets a girl (and do you have any doubt he's gonna fucking learn German ?). They have lots of money (in the only sane sense of "money", ie, power, leverage, the works) and no rules, so... what happens ? In one (classical) variant they share her ; in another (neogothic) variant the other ignores the matter entirely. What other variants are there ? It's a good basis, it just needs half-decent treatment. [↩]