Writer-director-actor Pietro Castellitto taps a rich vein of Italian social satire in his snub to the bourgeoisie Enea, revealing a unique, if somewhat chaotic, creative voice that commands attention. The finishing touches still need to be put on the narrative style, but the foundations are laid for future development.
The 30-year-old protags Enea (played by the director) and Valentino (folk singer Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio) are a hoot as daredevil rebels who scornfully trash the vacuous lives and empty souls of their well-to-do parents, while living high on their money. Their upscale search for values and the meaning of existence, at once grotesquely funny and unsettling in the reversals of class, should hit a responsive nerve in young adult audiences who like their messages in bright colors and easy metaphors.
The mischievous spirit of Castellitto’s screenplay, so full of Ostland-esque paradox, was already present his first film The Predators (2020), in which a family of radical chic intellectuals clashes with a working-class family of Mussolini fans. It won the Venice Orizzonti Prize for best screenplay, followed by double wins for best new director at the David di Donatello and Silver Ribbon awards in Italy.
Enea takes analogous social pokes at the audience in its tale of two dashing young country club wild men, best friends from the same upper social class, who casually and progressively make choices destructive to themselves and society – specifically, they decide to push drugs in schools for a sentimental gangster with a mother complex. It seems like the kind of unthought-out lark rich kids might embark on for the hell of it, to inject some emotion into their dull lives of leisure. But Castellitto spares us the obvious and, rather extraordinarily, never shows any bags of white powder or commerce of pills. It is simply announced that Enea and Valentino have amassed 20 million euros and their lives are now in danger, with various killers after the loot.
But this crisis doesn’t ruffle the cool of the two bosom buddies who, even as they stalk the tennis courts of their posh Roman club in impeccable designer clothes, know in their heart of hearts that they’re different from those around them: they are not enslaved. They “exist”.
All of this may seem like fodder for a popular Italian comedy, but the sophisticated treatment of the material makes it much more interesting than that. The closest it gets to traditional scenes are around Enea’s family dinner table, where he spars with his younger brother in the distracted presence of his ineffectual, repressed psychoanalyst father (played by real-life dad Sergio Castellitto, who starred in Italy’s “In Treatment”) and his highly conflicted literary critic mom (Chiara Noschese). The oldsters look on helplessly as the world literally collapses around them. One feels there’s a nod to Nanni Moretti in these moments, but the difference is that Castellitto’s world view is seen through the eyes of a younger generation filled with contemptuous chagrin for their elders, not vice versa.
The film strives to somehow latch on to the story of Virgil’s Aeneid and its noble-born hero Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and sailed to Italy with his friends, but it’s a long reach. At most, Enea the privileged drug dealer displays a disturbing, not heroic, fearlessness and aggression. Best known as a comic actor, the younger Castellitto transforms himself into a suave dandy with combed-back hair and magnetic, bright blue eyes in a role for which he is very well suited. Quarzo Guarascio offers the perfect contrast with his angelically curly hair and dreamy look, and a marked tendency to break out singing Renato Zero’s nostalgic “Beaches” at the drop of a hat.
Though there is actress Benedetta Porcaroli (Perfect Strangers) around to play a love interest, this remains very much a buddy movie, though the feelings between the pushy Enea and the gently ironic Valentino are never explored in a conventional way. Their exchanges of witty, barbed dialogue are pretty cryptic, but they seem to suggest the two are linked by a common feeling of inner freedom and a deep, self-sacrificing friendship. But in the end, only one of them will carry his free will through to its logical conclusion. The other will follow the script of Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution and marry into a life of wealth and convention.
Cinematically erudite and very playful in its use of music, Enea skillfully toys with expectations to keep the viewer constantly off balance. Edited by Gianluca Scarpa with a pleasing back-and-forth rhythm that captures the essence of a scene and then scratches over it like a DJ’s needle, the film can be quite expressionistic at times, like the “police raid” on an outdoor dance club lit by strobe lights. Radek Ladczuk’s cinematography is full of atmosphere and imaginative solutions, and the music by Niccolò Contessa is a creative mix dotted with oldies like Loretta Goggi’s ‘Maledetta Primavera’ and Zero’s ‘Spiagge’.
Director, screenwriter: Pietro Castellitto
Cast: Pietro Castellitto, Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio, Sergio Castellitto, Benedetta Porcaroli, Chiara Noschese, Giorgio Montanini, Adamo Dionisi, Matteo Branciamore, Cesare Castellitto
Producers: Lorenzo Mieli, Massimiliano Orfei, Luca Guadagnino
Cinematography: Radek Ladczuk
Production design: Massimiliano Nocente
Costume design: Andrea Cavalletto
Editing: Gianluca Scarpa
Music: Niccolò Contessa
Sound: Alessandro Palmerini
Special effects: Stefano Leoni
Production companies: The Apartment Pictures, Vision Distribution, Frenesy Film Company, Giovane Film
World sales: Vision Distribution
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In Italian
117 minutes