It’s New Year Eve in Rome, and Adelchi is fussing around his apartment making sure everything is just perfect as he has a hot date. He’s been chatting online with Claudio for some time now ….. or has he? Turns out that his intended is rather an introvert so his room-mate sister has been pretending to him, and she only confesses all to her brother that very night before sending off to meet the man who is already besotted with (the idea of) him. Adelchi lives with his neurotic sister Sylvia so rather leave her alone on such a night, he asks her to stay for dinner and also asks Claudio to bring his sister too. Francesca is a lesbian so she in turn invites her latest squeeze Marina, and her butch lesbian room-mate Mara. If that is not confusing enough …. and not quite the first date I would have wanted …. Adelchi also invites his best friend campy Marco and his muscled Argentinean Rent Boy boyfriend Nico.
Maybe I should have started this review by telling you this hyper frenetic and rather confusing comedy is a farce! And a very Italian one too boot where I would like to generously believe that the funny bits simply got lost in translation.
This is a gay comedy that has every single stereotype we have ever known …. and each one of them seems louder and larger than life. As the story follows these couples over the next year there are lots of major histrionics and very silly plot lines that may make you smile sometimes, but will mainly just drive you to distraction.
Hailed in Italy as the first totally gay comedy and it gained what I think is a really fabulous review from the extreme Catholic group ‘Milita Christ’ who said it was ‘a squalid apology of anti-natural and harmful behaviour’. They should so put that on the poster as it would fill any theater.
It’s a very camp piece of escapism that is about a very unrealistic group of gay people who I frankly didnt think existed anymore. But maybe they do. In Italy.
★★★★
