Tag: Sydney Sibilia

Rose Island ( L’incredibile storia dell’Isola delle Rose)

Posted on by victorfraga

There are some stories which, upon hearing them, you can’t help but feel they should be turned into a film. This is how it was for Sydney Sibilia when he learned about the unbelievably true yet seldom remembered case of the Esperantist Republic of Rose Island, founded in May 1968 off the coast of Rimini and sunk some months later in February ’69. And it’s this story of a Utopian land born out of the mind of a visionary, Bologna-born engineer, Giorgio Rosa, which the director of the I Can Quit Whenever I Want (2014) decided to bring to the big screen for Netflix, with production coming courtesy of his close friend Matteo Rovere. The result is Rose Island, an ambitious and well-made film which arguably places too much focus on the ludicrous nature of the story and fails to pay sufficient tribute to the extraordinary feat that inspired it.

The story in itself beggars belief: while the younger generations were fighting to change the world (in the late 1960s), the young engineer played by Elio Germano (crowned Best Actor at 2020’s Berlinale for his part in Hidden Away (Giorgio Diritti) proceeded to build the world that he’d dreamed of, all by himself, constructing a steel platform/island which measured 400 square metres and was located six miles off the Romagna coast, in extraterritorial waters, where the sole existing rule was to be free from any rules. Rosa asked the United Nations to recognise “Rose Island” – which had, in the meantime, become a hallowed destination for dreamers hailing from all around the world – as an independent state. The Italian government were entirely against the initiative. They used force to put an end to Rosa’s adventure, blowing the platform to smithereens in what would come to be known as the only war of aggression ever fought by the Italian Republic.

Writing the screenplay alongside Francesca Manieri (whom he also collaborated with on I Can Quit Whenever I Want 2: Masterclass, 2017, and I Can Quit Whenever I Want 3: Ad Honorem, 2019), Sibilia chooses to endow the entire enterprise with a comic tone, from the very first sequence where we see the Italian engineer chilled to the bone in the lobby of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, as he waits to be received in order to put forward his case and to assert his position against an Italian state which, in his opinion, is only familiar with one form of freedom: the “conditioned” kind.

What follows is a long flashback retracing the steps which led to the founding of the small Independent State of which Rosa has declared himself President: from his degree in engineering to the creation of “toys which are constantly getting you arrested” – as his enraged ex-girlfriend Gabriella (Matilda De Angelis) describes his inventions – right on through to the spark which is ignited in anarchist and idealist Giorgio’s mind when he happens upon an oil company’s advertising poster (“Our platform, your freedom”).

Wisely shot and visually captivating with its glossy reconstruction of the 1960s, awash with pastel tones and musical hits of the time, the film does, at times, feel somewhat unbelievable, which is ironic given that for all its absurdity, the fundamental story is true. In their slight romanticisation of Rosa’s adventure, the authors have chosen to place focus on the ludicrous side of the tale and to downplay the epic nature of his feat, which ultimately leaves the viewer confused over the real motives behind Rosa’s enterprise. It’s a light-hearted and enjoyable film, but we’re left wondering whether this was really the right tone to adopt in the telling of such an exceptional story.

Rose Island was produced by Groenlandia on behalf of Netflix; the film is available now on Netflix..

This piece was translated from Italian and originally published on Cineuropa.

I Can Quit Whenever I Want (Smetto Quando Voglio)

Posted on by victorfraga

If you have spent your entire life in academia, you may feel that you are only suited for one thing. This is certainly the case of Pietro Zinni (Edoardo Leo), a neurobiologist, who upon losing his university contract realises that the only thing he is suitable for now is creating party pills. He is 38, behind on all of his bills, and has no idea how to apply himself to new work. Enrolling a gang that includes a cultural anthropologist, an archaeologist, and two Latin scholars, the hapless Pietro enters the black market only to find himself way in over his head.

The film is a clash between the “rise-and-fall” gangster genre and a traditional fish-out-of-water comedy. Director Sydney Sibilia does a great job of depicting his group of oddballs adapting to their new life. Plot-wise, comparisons to the TV series Breaking Bad are inevitable, but while the acclaimed TV series carefully built up its world block by block, I Can Quit Whenever I Want is a much looser affair. In fact, with all its hyper-specific nerd jokes, it is closer in tone to The Big Bang Theory. The mileage of these jokes will vary with how much you understand each subject.

Hidden behind the comedy is a critique of a society that has left its smartest people behind. All these men are more than qualified to hold positions in university, but are now working menial jobs to get by. The results of the financial crisis as well as Italian austerity looms heavy over the film. With endless bills to pay, as well as his girlfriend Giulia (Valeria Solarino) pressuring him to buy a dishwasher, Pietro doesn’t think twice about the ethical implications of taking up this line of work. After all, you don’t think about ethics when you can’t afford anything. This situation is later milked by the fact Giulia works in social care looking after drug addicts. While her position as the nagging girlfriend could’ve reduced her to a common stereotype, Solarino does great work here to make Giulia a three-dimensional character, giving the movie a moral depth it might’ve otherwise lacked. She is crucial to humanising what could have been a trivial movie.

Like nearly all gangster movies, the rise in I Can Quit is accompanied by a fall. The gang are not used to such lavish wealth and suddenly find themselves surrounded by escorts, wearing fine clothes and splashing cash on extravagant cars. But they are not the only men in town, finding out that they have muscled in on top dog Murena’s (Neri Marcorè) turf. As far as villains go, he is neither comic or scary, instead coming across as rather generic. We do learn more about him, in a nice twist that sums up the overall feel-good vibe of the movie.

With a style reminiscent of early Guy Ritchie films, the movie constantly distorts traditional gangster tropes. For example, when they need to rob a pharmacy, they use ancient guns that were originally intended for The Hermitage. Then, in a true Ritchie locale, a crucial drug deal is conducted at a traditional Sinti wedding. What makes it different from classics such as Ritchie’s Snatch (2000) however, is the kind of breathless non-linear storytelling that forces the viewer to imagine some of the details themselves. With a little more daring in the editing, more voiceover, and more montages, I Can Quit Whenever I Want could’ve been as cinematically entertaining as it is comically satisfying. Nevertheless, for fans of Breaking Bad and Guy Ritchie movies, this movie will go down just like a good pill.

I Can Quit Whenever I Want is available on all major VoD platforms on Monday, July 9th, as part of the Walk This Way Collection, European Film on Demand. Click here in order to view the film in the UK, or here if you are elsewhere in Europe.