We Can Do That

Nello works for the union and is pushed out for going too far. He is given a cooperative to run: a working association formed by people released from a psychiatric hospital. The cooperative sticks stamps and nobody asks what it earns. Nello changes the arrangement: he wants real work at real wages. The group starts laying parquet floors and turns out to be good at it. Giulio Manfredonia directs. Claudio Bisio plays Nello. There is a real law behind it. The Basaglia law, passed in Italy in 1978, closed the psychiatric hospitals and released thousands of people without an order being built outside; the film is drawn from one of the cooperatives that appeared in that gap in the eighties. The idea is that work is not a cure but recognition is. The members of the cooperative do not get better; they are simply paid for a job for the first time, and what that means changes across the film. The tone stays on the comic side and the choice was argued over; the narrative hardens at one point and goes where the comic shape cannot follow. The doctor is the counter voice and the film grants him his case, showing who pays for change made too fast. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian social comedy and films drawn from real events. Who it is not for: the humour is too light for the subject in places, the characters are types, and the ending ties things up too neatly.