Troppo Azzuro – Italian Cineclub

Flavio Aulino on the movie he selected for this month:

An ironic, colorful, and intelligent portrait of Generation Z

Dario (played by Filippo Barbagallo, who is not only the director of the movie but also the main character) is a typical member of what is called Generation Z, that is, young people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Dario is the only child of a couple of overprotective parents belonging, on the other hand, to the better-known Generation X. He is an anxious 25-year-old Roman who is afraid of life and has difficulties relating to others and managing romantic relationships. Always terrified of the consequences of “what might happen next,” he lives in the cult of immobility, like a kind of modern-day Oblomov.

In the summer, his parents leave for vacation, and Dario decides not to follow them and to take a trip with his friends, but things don’t go as planned. Due to a minor incident, two girls unexpectedly enter his life, disrupting the protagonist’s apparent emotional quiet. Hence begins a tender, ironic, and funny story in which the “malincomical” traces of Verdone’s and Moretti’s early films can be found. The film premiered at the last Rome Film Festival and was nominated for best comedy at the Nastri d’Argento 2024.