Ovosodo

Paolo Virzì's coming-of-age film, set in his home city of Livorno. The title is also the name of a working-class neighbourhood there and the character's nickname. Piero is born poor; his mother is dead and his father is in prison. He is a clever boy, but where that cleverness will take him is not clear; in Italy, moving up a class amounts to entering the world of his rich friend Tommaso and being unable to stay in it. The film follows a line from childhood to fatherhood and never rescues him. Virzì's register is oddly cheerful: poverty is narrated with laughter, though the film never suggests any of it is accidental. Edoardo Gabbriellini plays the adult Piero, with Claudia Pandolfi and Nicoletta Braschi in the cast. It competed for the Golden Lion at Venice in 1997 and won the Grand Special Jury Prize and the Little Golden Lion; Gabbriellini took the Pasinetti award for best actor. An important work for anyone interested in Italian cinema and coming-of-age stories built on class. Some jokes slip past viewers who do not know the Livorno dialect or the local references.