August Vacation

An Italian comedy. The place is Ventotene, a small island. It is the August holiday and two separate groups are staying in neighbouring houses. On one side is Sandro; a journalist who counts himself an intellectual and explains constantly. His family and friends are with him. On the other is Ruggero; the owner of two gun shops, loud, well off and pleased about it. He has a crowded family too. The two groups despise each other and have to share the same street, the same beach and the same evening. Then something happens. Ruggero fires a gun as a joke and an immigrant is wounded. Sandro makes a complaint and the police come. To be forgiven, Ruggero arranges a gathering at night. It turns less into an apology than a reckoning; politics, class, the state of the country and what everyone really thinks of each other come out at the table. What the film is interested in is not the holiday but the country: the two groups stand for the two sides of Italy in the 1990s, and the film treats them with equal hardness. The intellectual side is arrogant even when it is right; the other is sincere even when it is coarse. Silvio Orlando, Sabrina Ferilli, Ennio Fantastichini and Laura Morante are in the cast. Paolo Virzì directed and wrote the screenplay with Francesco Bruni. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian social comedy and crowded holiday films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the narrative to take a side; the film rescues nobody.