Italian filmmaker Gabriele Muccino is back on his home turf after a stint in Hollywood where, amongst other things, he directed two Will Smith movies. His new movie is the story of two Italian teenagers and although Muccino, in a story he co-wrote with Dale Nall, briefly starts their tale in Rome, he moves the action to the US where they are reluctantly spending a vacation together.
Curly-headed Marco (Brando Pacitto) had delayed his plans for the summer after an accident on his scooter, but when the Insurance company paid up it did at least provide him sufficient funds to finally travel. His friend Vulcano was already in California and so told Marco that he could hook him up with some friends of his who would let him crash in their apartment in San Francisco for a few days. However what he failed to tell Marco was that he had also said the same to Maria (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) one of their very conservative and uptight school mates who he practically loathed.
Now with Maria in tow he landed in S.F. to discover that their hosts Matt (Taylor Frey) and Paul (Joseph Haro) were actually a gay couple which brought out all Maria’s homophobia which she barely tried to suppress. By the 2nd day however Maria had relaxed a little, mainly because she was starting to get ‘a thing’ for Matt especially after she discovered that he was actually bi-sexual. In fact the recounting of the story of how he and Paul got together was definitely one of the more dramatic highlights of this story that actually got a tad pedestrian at times.
The few days that Marco and Maria were meant to stay in S.F. turned into weeks as all four of them bonded, although not exactly in the way that the two Italians would have liked. Maria by now had a serious crush on Matt and although she had now warmed to Marco, she would not allow him to act on his feelings for her.
This story of coming out, both gay and straight, has an air of expectancy of things that will never happen. Muccino includes several false leads in this otherwise entertaining tale to give the impression of a layer of complexity that it simply doesn’t have. Despite his efforts to intrigue us more, it is always pretty obvious how this all is going to pan out in the end.
He casts the piece well with some formidable performances from his four talented young leads, especially from Frey who is particularly convincing as the once sexually confused Matt who is extremely happy with the hand that life has dealt him.
Summertime is like the season it is set in. Light and sunny and easy on the eye, and simply a happy diversion from the rest of the (cold) year.
Labels: 2017, coming of age, drama, italian
