7 and 8

An Italian comedy. Palermo, 1975. In a maternity ward the tags of two babies are swapped. A male nurse does it; the reason is given at the start and nobody notices. Thirty-one years later two men meet by accident. Tommaso works small angles; picking pockets, minor fraud, getting through the day. Daniele is quiet, orderly and rule-bound to the point of dullness, a student. When they meet their lives tangle and the truth comes out slowly: they grew up for years in the wrong families. From there the film is about two families, two neighbourhoods and two ways of living meeting. The question of who belongs where is the source of the comedy. What the narrative is interested in is not fate but circumstance: it shows how different the roads are in front of two people born in the same city, and does it without blaming. It was shot entirely in the streets of Palermo and the city is part of the film; the markets, the narrow streets and the local speech are its texture. The comic duo Ficarra and Picone take the leads; they are known from television in Italy and are also credited among the directors. Giambattista Avellino directed with Ficarra and Picone. It did well at the Italian box office. Who it is for: anyone who likes regional Italian comedy and stories of swapped identity. Who it is not for: anyone watching with subtitles; a large part of the humour rests on the Sicilian dialect and is lost in translation.