To Carlo Verdone, indeed, in his long artistic curriculum, a foray into the world of TV series was missing. An agreement with Amazon Video and the several months in lockdown served the Roman actor and comedian to write together with Nicola Guaglione a tv series in ten episodes where Verdone for the first time, tells not a story or a mask, but his life, his intimacy, the torments, the pleasures and the sorrows, in short, a real foray into the everyday life of an actor loved and recognized by all, with an unprecedented narrative implication – the possible candidacy for mayor of Rome – on which a plan will focus narrative and dramaturgical useful for the same purposes as the series. We are talking about Life as a Carlo, of which we present our review.
Life as a Carlo tells Carlo, or almost
Carlo Verdone wanders around Rome, some – indeed, all – recognize him and ask him for a photo, an autograph, a selfie, even two newlyweds stop the post-celebration ritual photographs to immortalize themselves with the well-known Roman actor. There is more Rome in him than in many monuments or historic streets in the center by now degraded. So here in a fit of momentary visceral rage, at the umpteenth accident due to holes, Verdone in front of a small curious madman, gets exasperated for those who disfigure the capital. Some shoot it with their mobile phones, the video becomes viral, they make memes, Instagram stories, in short, Carlo as a true Roman only wants the good for his city, as long as the majority notices him and proposes him to run for mayor of Rome, this while he would instead like to devote himself to an arthouse film, badly viewed by its producer
Ten episodes to discuss what anyone who has followed Verdone’s career has been wondering for a long, long time: how has Verdone’s authorial approach to his cinema changed? Many criticize the latest films, defined as those who are scraping the bottom, so why not recall the famous masks? Fulvio, Mimmo, Oscar Pettinari, all characters children of a Rome (nity) that has made school and that has made Verdone immortal over time, since these are people who can really meet in the course of our life, even the melancholy Pietro Ruffolo, called “er potato” by old friends in Schoolmates, a film that a young boy met at university will define as “cute”, even though he prefers the others, because there is little laughs there.
It will do the same its manufacturer (a splendid Stefano Ambrogi) that seems to recall the already known adventures of Verdone first with Sergio Leone and then with Cecchi Gori, on the value of comedy in a film, of how Verdone is better at directing than at writing, because in the scripts you never understand the final value of the film, therefore Why, despite his fame, is he unable to establish himself and have a personal, unpublished, dramatic film with an authorial breath produced? Because Carlo Verdone – he seems to want to tell us with this series – has built and inserted himself in this sphere where if he tries to come out, he makes a blatantly wrong and he does not want to make mistakes, much less disappoint family and fans.
A melancholy look
There is a strong melancholy in this series; an at times unreal and comic resolution of events. The hectic life of Verdone as an actor is filled with phone calls with his agent, with producers who contest contracts, with friends (a fantastic Max Tortora who plays himself) who ask him for advice on married or professional life, his famous hypochondriac vein which leads him to know and recommend many medicines even without prescription, finally the morbid relationship with the fans, who do not want the new Carlo who is perhaps really thinking about getting into politics, but that of Mimmo with Sora Lella, of “I make it strange”.
Talking about his life, Carlo Verdone conveys the fantasy of the political interlude to perhaps underline these acute criticisms that he has been receiving in recent years: many do not want to voluntarily understand his latest films, because they are too anchored to the past, to the characters, to the hilarious and recognizable Roman masks.
In its simplicity of intentions, unfortunately the series is lost in a glass of water in the final stages. When he has to close all the open primary and secondary plots, the script instead remains empty about everything. There is no satisfactory closure to what has been narrated up to that point, it is a very successful personal and interpersonal outlet in the intimate value, less in the final message, which ends in a search for a personal goal that perhaps will still have to come, with a gloss narrative that winks (too much) at the final research of Jep Gambardella de The great beauty, of which Verdone himself was an actor.
It is precisely the insistence on so many micro-stories that makes the final resolution of the events limp: Paolo Calabresi, Morgan, Max Tortora, Alessandro Haber, Antonello Venditti, the children of Verdone and their respective partners, the shipwrecked marriage, the relationship with the fans on and off the screen. Less than half of these brackets are closed, the rest remain there, vacant, dull, prey to a craving and a general annoyance that is perhaps entirely wanted, as if to tell a void to which to give a concrete form, and then let it be deciphered. to the viewer. Life as a Carlo And a particular style exercise, not entirely successful, but which marks a positive debut in seriality, but perhaps arrived out of time.
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