Starring: Stefano Accorsi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Rated: M15+
Italian with English subtitles
ITALY has been always famous as a Catholic country centred on the family.
If you want to see just how many changes are occurring in the cradle of Roman Catholicism, The Last Kiss might be your best opportunity.
Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) and Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) have been in a de facto relationship for a couple of years.
Giulia is pregnant and there is some pressure from their families to get married before the baby is born. Even though they are in their late 20s and their friends are getting married or making other life choices, they are resisting the pressure to walk up the aisle.
Aided and abetted by his friends, the unhappily married and recent father Adriano (Giorgio Pasotti) and the promiscuous Alberto (Marco Cocci), Carlo needs to prove his youthful virility and so has the briefest of affairs with an 18 year-old girl. Giulia finds out and leaves him. Carlo has plenty of growing up to do.
On one level this film charts the angst of 30 year-olds in the Western world who are terrified of life-long commitment. We get a glimpse of why this might be the case in the way their parent’s marriages are portrayed – overly dependent or sterile and cold or just unhappy.
Why should children choose marriage when they see how unhappy it has made their parents?
On another level it also shows how selfish and ‘me-centred’ this generation can be.
The acting is uniformally good if a touch hysterical by Australian standards. The women especially, seem to scream throughout The Last Kiss.
We grow to like Carlo and Giulia and are rewarded for hanging in there with them as they go on this rather self-indulgent and angst-ridden journey. While it’s set in Catholic Italy, The Last Kiss explores issues we all know are present in our country as well.
