06/03/2024 - In the sequel to Ferie d’agosto, Paolo Virzì orchestrates another clash between two social groups emblematic of Italy, in a bitter comedy characterised by missed opportunities and defeat

The sixteenth feature film in Paolo Virzì’s filmography, Un altro Ferragosto [+see also:
trailer
film profile], is the sequel to his second work, released in 1996, Ferie d’agosto. It was an unusual and revolutionary comedy which signalled the birth of “Virzì style” and rapidly became a cult hit, remaining so to this day. The first film depicted a face-off between two groups holidaying on the island of Ventotene who were emblematic of Italy at the time: one was led by a sophisticated and elitist left-wing intellectual called Sandro (Silvio Orlando), the other by the rich, coarse and right-wing but ultimately politically apathetic Ruggero (Ennio Fantastichini).

In Un altro Ferragosto, which hits Italian cinemas tomorrow, 7 March, via 01 Distribution, we’re taken back to the same island, almost thirty years later, and reunited with the remaining members of those two groups, together with the children, grandchildren, husbands and partners who have since joined these two clans. Some members of the original cast are simply no longer with us, such as actors Piero Natoli and Fantastichini himself, who nonetheless appears in the sequel - courtesy of the film’s clever and intricate screenplay, which was co-written with the highly expert Francesco Bruni - in the form of ashes kept in an elegant urn which his widow Luciana (Paola Tiziana Cruciani) brings on holiday with her. Some of the characters are struggling with the hand they’ve been dealt, such as protagonist Sandro who’s wrestling with a serious illness.

It’s impossible to cover all of the characters in this film, the cast of which would make the champion of ensemble movies - which might be considered outmoded in Italian film today - Gabriele Muccino blanche. Suffice to say that the continual references to the original film and images/flashbacks from the 1995 movie are interwoven with new conflicts and emotional entanglements, and prevailing stereotypes are updated. Most noteworthy among them is the useless influencer (Anna Ferraioli Ravel) who has accumulated millions of followers off the back of a nail varnish tutorial and has travelled to the island to marry (with the help of a wedding planner and everything) a man (Vinicio Marchioni) who doesn’t love her and whose sole aim is to exploit her celebrity; and Altiero (Andrea Carpenzano), the estranged son of family head Sandro who has returned from the USA, where he now enjoys an incredibly wealthy lifestyle thanks to an app for encrypted messaging, with his American husband Noah (Lorenzo Saugo).

These two representatives of social modernity (at a time when satire is no more ridiculous than reality itself) are joined by other examples of an increasingly polarised and stale society. In Virzì’s 1995 movie, politics was the watershed; now the disappearance of ideologies is the glue that binds the characters together. Once again, the island on which, in 1941, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi were interned - two political prisoners who opposed fascism and who wrote the “Ventotene Manifesto”, which is now considered to be one of the founding texts of the European Union - serves as a battleground for two different ways of thinking and living, both of which having their weak spots. Sandro dreams in black and white of speaking with those two fathers of democracy. The others have no idea who these fathers are. There’s no shortage of gags aimed at highlighting (with affectionate ruthlessness) the two tribes’ narrow-mindedness and emotional ignorance. But the heavy yet highly sophisticated comedy offered up by the king of old Italian blockbusters Christian De Sica dominates everyone and everything, as if the director were surrendering to the rudest kind of humour. At the same time, an onerous atmosphere of death, the passing of time, missed opportunities, defeat and loss reigns supreme throughout the entire comedy, and this is the most effective element of the film.

Un altro Ferragosto is produced by Lotus Production - a Leone Film Group company – together with RAI Cinema, in association with Tenderstories.

(Translated from Italian)