Even the director of this film seemed rather uncertain and apologetic about it when he popped up after an open-air screening on Rome's Tiber Island, saying parts of it worked better than others, which is true enough.
Four young neapolitans travel to Hamburg to carry out a burglary which nets them nothing, but they have tickets to Oslo and so press on. Most of the film recounts their grim experience living underground in that city.
Shot in just four weeks in three countries, with a very mixed cast, it has some really fine performances and a gritty take on stateless lives. But the tone is all over the place, with bits of finely observed comedy from its hopeless protagonists veering through surreal nastiness to rather hackneyed violence before settling for depression as a principal note. The characters are too many and not well enough differentiated, the logic of the story is often weak (the boys speak neapolitan dialect, which is rather a challenge) and, like most films, it is at least half-an-hour too long.
I'm not sure why so many independent (ie: state-financed) Italian films go for suicidal gloom as a marker for seriousness. With a more focused script, and a lighter touch, this could have been the film its actors deserve.
Four young neapolitans travel to Hamburg to carry out a burglary which nets them nothing, but they have tickets to Oslo and so press on. Most of the film recounts their grim experience living underground in that city.
Shot in just four weeks in three countries, with a very mixed cast, it has some really fine performances and a gritty take on stateless lives. But the tone is all over the place, with bits of finely observed comedy from its hopeless protagonists veering through surreal nastiness to rather hackneyed violence before settling for depression as a principal note. The characters are too many and not well enough differentiated, the logic of the story is often weak (the boys speak neapolitan dialect, which is rather a challenge) and, like most films, it is at least half-an-hour too long.
I'm not sure why so many independent (ie: state-financed) Italian films go for suicidal gloom as a marker for seriousness. With a more focused script, and a lighter touch, this could have been the film its actors deserve.
