The Last One for the Road (2025)
Directed by Francesco Sossai
Italian with English subtitles<\/p>\n
An \u201carthouse\u201d \u201croad-trip\u201d \u201cbuddy\u201d movie. The adjectives already widely applied to Francesco Sossai\u2019s\u00a0The Last One for the Road suggest a decidedly hybrid film. They are not inaccurate. To their multiplicity we might add the more high-flown genres of the picaresque and the Bildungsfilm (coming of age). For, its three central protagonists differ significantly in temperament and trajectory, from the two roguish and affable middle-aged men, Carlobianchi and Doriano, to Giulio, the Neapolitan architectural student whom they befriend and help to \u201ccome of age\u201d with encouragement both sentimental and sexual. By turns hard-bitten and caricatural, the lessons they teach their young charge occasionally brush up against the clich\u00e9. Yet the film\u2019s peculiar mix of cynicism and insouciance, along with some striking cinematography, rescue it from platitude.<\/p>\n
Once a prodigious engine of the country\u2019s manufacturing economy and made-in-Italy trade\u2014with an attendant (and often insufferable) nouveau riche\u2014the Veneto province\u2019s late twentieth-century boom has tended toward a protracted bust since 2008. Half-built houses and ubiquitous \u201cfor rent\u201d signs speak as poignantly as any character to that lingering disaffection. Alcohol serves as a temporary balm. The film\u2019s English title evokes the last drinks of the night that its protagonists keep vowing to grab. By contrast, its original Italian Le citt\u00e0 di pianura [The cities of the plain] speaks more matter-of-factly to the film\u2019s geographical realities\u2014the lowland terra firma sprawling west from the Venetian lagoon\u2014and hence to the sociological specificity of its underemployed subjects.<\/p>\n
The film opens with a helicopter ride by two industrial representatives, immersed in inane and banal banter. Their almost absurd landing in a dusty patch of a small northern town inevitably recalls (and travesties) the initial sequence of La Dolce Vita. If the helicopter traversing Rome\u2019s skyline epitomized the economic \u201cmiracle\u201d of the late 1950s that Federico Fellini\u2019s film mordantly examined, one hovers here with comparable, and knowing, acerbity. The factory envoys touch down outside a factory to f\u00eate an elderly worker, Primo Sossai, on the day of his retirement (that he shares the director\u2019s last name can be no coincidence). They summarily offer the unsuspecting Primo a quick gulp of champagne and an inscribed Rolex watch, in recognition of his many years\u2019 commitment to the company \u201cfamily.\u201d They beat a quick return to their helicopter after a hasty, patronizing speech in front of Primo\u2019s co-workers, including a man (Genio) who throws a duffel bag in his car and leaves with a look of vague disdain. He will resurface as one of the film\u2019s key figures, central as much for his absence as for his imminent return.<\/p>\n
The rest of the plot takes place years after Genio has departed Italy for self-imposed exile in Argentina. It falls to Carlobianchi and Doriano, his friends and former colleagues, to relate his story. Much of the film revolves around their aborted effort to pick Genio up from the airport after many years away. Their confusion as to precisely which airport he is flying into forms the subject of some Laurel and Hardy style hijinks. But it is the matter of Genio\u2019s expatriation, and how it bears upon their own lives, which anchors the plot and its pathos.<\/p>\n
So too does their friendship and its shared woes\u2014a fraternity quickly extended to the young Giulio, whom they meet one night while carousing in Venice. Celebrating the recent graduation of a fellow female student\u2014on whom he has an undeclared crush\u2014the lovelorn Giulio finds solace in the errant chatter and drunken conviviality of Doriano and Carlobianchi. Shared in a cozy local bar where a young man strums wistful guitar tunes, their intertwined life\u2019s stories remain bound with that of the mythical Genio\u2014who came from one of the last local farming communities and whose father was crushed by a tractor decades ago. A number of flashbacks stitch together the story of their friendship with Genio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Last One for the Road (2025)Directed by Francesco SossaiItalian with English subtitles An \u201carthouse\u201d \u201croad-trip\u201d \u201cbuddy\u201d movie.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1149,3458,3457,3459,3456,2878,98,3461,3462,100,99,3455,17,1117,3465,749,2538,9,3463,24,63,3460,3464,905],"class_list":["post-213777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-art","tag-art-books","tag-art-critic","tag-art-reviews","tag-artists","tag-books","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-art","tag-brooklyn-culture","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-contemporary-art","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-fiction","tag-film","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-art-scene","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-phong-bui","tag-poetry","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}