The Last One for the Road (Le città di pianura)

 

Director Francesco Sossai

Sossai on the set with Sergio Romano

THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD (Le città di pianura)                 B                                            Italy  Germany  (100 mi)  2025  d: Francesco Sossai

We’re too old to grow up.                                                                                                               —Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovillo)

Old geezers on parade, a zany road trip featuring the misadventures of two fiftyish small-time Italian crooks, best friends Carlobianci (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (musician and singer-songwriter Pierpaolo Capovillo), who obsessively live for their next drink, stopping at any roadside tavern along the way, bound by their proverbial ritual of always seeking that one final drink, literally spending their lives completely inebriated, where this is their normalized state of mind, kind of like a Charles Bukowski fever dream.  A bizarre, dialogue-heavy character study written by Sossai and Adriano Candiago, it resembles the comic absurdity of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, two colorful characters who are oblivious to the changing times, passing their time in endless existential conversations and philosophical musings, where not much of anything happens.  These unwitting millennials were born during a time of intense economic growth, but entered the workforce during the devastating 2008 Great Recession, the worst downturn since the Great Depression, later facing the Covid pandemic during their prime earning years, and are sometimes called a new “Lost Generation” because these historic economic shocks left them with massive debt, lower wealth accumulation, and delayed major life milestones compared to previous generations, now subsisting on memories, forever recalling their glory days as if it was just yesterday, raising their glass, claiming “it’s still yesterday for us.”  Shot by Massimiliano Kuveiller on Super 16mm and 35mm film stock, with an incredibly raw and crude sounding guitar soundtrack that was composed by local musician Krano, who is seen live onstage at one point, sounding as ragged as anything you could ever imagine.  Premiering at the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2025, Francesco Sossai was born in the area depicted in the film, forever changed by globalization, so he understands it intrinsically, making short films at an early age, moving to Rome where he graduated in English and German Literatures before being admitted to the German Television Film Academy in Berlin (DFFB).  Like outtakes from an Aki Kaurismäki hangout movie, with no real story to speak of, portraying a side of Italy that is not often shown, freely exploring the road not taken, this is a raw and seemingly unrehearsed odyssey of aging boozers and ruined romantics, driven to rediscover all their old favorite hangouts to eat and drink, which still linger in their imaginations, yet never seem to live up to their expectations, following their spontaneous journey from bar to bar.

An aimless and meandering film about middle-aged male disillusionment and the time we’ve lost, and the time that has been wasted, literally stumbling from place to place, where the lives of these anti-heroes have been filled with plenty of regrets, as they once had a thriving construction business, building a highway that links Lisbon through Treviso to Budapest, but since 2008 they’ve long since lost their jobs and become black market scam artists, swindlers, and petty thieves, continually coming up with ways to make something out of nothing, yet riding in style, as Carlobianci splurged on a Jaguar S-Type luxury vehicle when they were flush with cash, money that is long gone, yet they continue to cherish those memories as they now face the impending mediocrity of middle age.  In a flash, Carlobianci seems to have unlocked the secret of life, literally beaming with joy, but just as quicky it is instantly forgotten, spending the rest of the film trying to remember as they wander through these massive transformations, both cultural and physical, that the landscape is going through, making it nearly unrecognizable to how we remember it, completely altering our idea of identity.  At one stop along the way in the wee hours of the night, they notice something strange about what they’re drinking, disappointed to discover it is non-alcoholic beer, thinking that doesn’t really count, concocting a plan to pick up their exiled partner in crime Genio at the airport in Venice, returning to Italy after fleeing to Argentina before the 2008 financial crisis, feeling giddy about the idea, driving through the night to get there, LE CITTÀ DI PIANURA by Francesco SOSSAI - Clip 1 YouTube (1:33).  Stopping at a roadside Country & Western bar, our protagonists comment that they may as well be in America as men and women in cowboy hats are doing some line dancing.  A German tourist at the bar mentions that he’s there to see Italy before it’s destroyed, with Carlobianchi uttering, “I think you’re too late.”  Continuing on their trek, the Venetian bar they were pursuing is somehow closed, but opportunity knocks, as they stumble upon a boisterous group of college students loudly celebrating a graduation on the streets, easily joining in the festivities, asking where they can get a drink, and immediately the entire group shifts to a nearby local bar, but before they do, our guys happen to witness a conversation between the shy, reserved, and lovestruck architectural student Giulio (Filippo Scotti, the star of Paolo Sorrentino’s 2021 The Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio), and the girl of his dreams, Giulia (Giulia Bertasi), claiming he needs to go home as he has a design exam early in the morning, indicating they’ll meet another time, but she declares, “There’s never another time.” 

Seemingly innocuous and harmless, this expression is a key to unlocking the film, with Carlobianci repeating the phrase to him as they drag him to the party.  With that seemingly innocent gesture, the bookish Giulio suddenly becomes the third wheel to our road trip adventure, initially quiet and  standoffish, wondering how he got railroaded into this terrible idea, but he soon forgets his morning appointment and warms to their all-embracing, anything goes style, becoming something of a free for all as they travel across a stretch of land running from Venice to Milan called the Pianura, or the flatlands of Veneto, once the beating heart of the Italian economy, but now fallen on hard times with industry and economic growth abandoning the region, seemingly transformed overnight, as globalization has led to a near-complete uniformity, creating a stifling homogeneity.  Carlobianchi is a man consumed by regrets, feeling as though time has passed him by, haunted by the choices he's made.  Doriano has already come to terms with his past, offering a quiet wisdom that Carlobianchi could only hope for, while the sweetly charming Giulio is just embarking on his own journey of self-discovery, with our heroes continually encouraging him to build up his courage and go after the girl.  Somehow the three of them explore things that matter in their own distinct way, continually wandering off course, finding trivialities and small everyday moments, yet always searching for hidden meaning in their lives.  When they do finally connect with Genio (Andrea Pennacchi), pinning their hopes on cash he buried before the financial crisis, they’re stymied once again, as modernization has constructed a building over the site, leaving them thoroughly demoralized.  Capturing the beauty of the end of an era while mostly drunk or hungover, this is a different kind of movie, recalling Dino Risi’s IL SORPASSO (1962), but less tragic, reviving the Commedia all'italiana style through the Dionysian spirit, filled with unexpected turns and strange realizations, like the sudden shift to Giulio’s point of view on a trip to Treviso for the post-modernist Brion Memorial designed by Carlo Scarpa, with its heavily concrete forms, viewed through the academically informed eyes of Giulio, bonded by their friendship as an emotional anchor, offering a different vision of the future, unfolding in a melancholy road movie that never really leads anywhere, LE CITTÀ DI PIANURA by Francesco SOSSAI - Clip 2 YouTube (1:16).  Through sad and jubilant moments, there is never a sense of the profound, as the journey blends humor with matters of the heart, balancing the light and the heavy in a way that draws the audience deep into the characters’ lives, where it’s not places, or monuments, or things that represent a country, but the people living in it, offering an intimate exploration of human connection, forgiveness, and hope.

Marty Supreme

 

Director Josh Safdie 

Timothée Chalamet on the set

Safdie with Timothée Chalamet

Darius Khondji on the set

Tokyo set

Marty Reisman, 1946

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MARTY SUPREME              B-                                                                                         Finland  USA  (150 mi)  2025  ‘Scope  d: Josh Safdie

I have a purpose.  You don’t.  And if you think that’s some kind of blessing, it’s not.  It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.  And with that obligation comes sacrifice. 
—Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet)

A bit of a hot mess, a sprawling, anxiety-ridden, and extremely over-produced film with loud, instrusive music by composer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) that plays throughout, though there’s an exquisite use of popular songs of the 1980’s, also synthesizer sounds from the same era, opening and closing with Tears for Fears, but the original score offers no hint of subtlety, as if the entire film is a remix video.  Made by Josh Safdie, the first time not working with his younger brother Benny, the makers of Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019), excelling in expressing that New York City vibe, where this has the same frantic, adrenaline-laced energy, loosely inspired by the life of early 1950’s ping pong aficionado Marty Reisman ("Marty Reisman – US Table Tennis Hall of Fame") and his book, The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler (1974), where in the 40’s and 50’s, New York City table tennis was a collection of misfits and gamblers, where betting on the game drove the sport, with a talented player able rake in hundreds in a single night, which would be the equivalent of thousands today.  There already is a documentary made about the flamboyant Reisman, Leo Leigh’s FACT OR FICTION: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A PING PONG HUSTLER (2014).  The hustler aspect of the sport recalls the eloquent pool playing grace of Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats, the best player in the world, and Paul Newman’s rising star Fast Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler (1961), though this doesn’t come close to the tension-filled, insatiably-interesting character study of that memorable film, which perfectly captured the stench and dingy atmosphere of the smoke-filled poolroom.  The raison d’être of this film is Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, so good in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (2017) and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (2024), who has secretly been preparing for this role for six or seven years, continually training and becoming familiar with the game, even traveling with a table while he worked on other films, creating a fictionalized portrait of the most flamboyantly charismatic table tennis player the world has ever witnessed, whose live-wire approach carries nearly every scene of the film, literally careening from place to place.  Written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, who both co-edited the film as well, this becomes a collaborative effort in creating an immersive portrait of what’s commonly known as a bullshit artist that feels like a psychotic-driven, impressionistic mosaic of neverending mood swings.  While ostensibly about ping pong, the protagonist feels more like the volatile and ferociously temperamental chess champion Bobby Fischer of table tennis, both viewing the game as nothing less than armed combat, as the film reveals just how difficult it was to build a career around a sport that still hadn’t caught on in the United States.  Table tennis didn’t become an Olympic sport until 1988 (no American has ever medaled), so Marty had to go to great lengths to hustle money in the most unorthodox of ways, bordering on criminality, to finance his dream of becoming a world champion, knowing he was talented enough, but finding his way into international tournaments on the other side of the world was another story.

Listed at #2 at IndieWire: The 25 Best Movies of 2025, and #3 at The Playlist: The 25 Best Films of 2025 and New York Times: Manohla Dargis: Best Movies of 2025, it’s all about having a single-minded purpose, as we initially find Marty, a Lower East Side Jewish kid stuck working in his uncle’s shoestore, where we hear him bragging that he could sell shoes to an amputee, taking a break from fitting women’s shoes to have a backroom tryst with his childhood sweetheart, Rachel (Odessa A’zion), who is married to someone else that treats her badly, exuding passion in everything he does as he desperately tries to raise the money to afford airfare to England to play in their invitational.  Crossing the line at every turn, Marty justifies his deplorable antics by thinking the ends justify the means, but not everyone else sees it that way, as he’s a natural born street hustler and swindler, where many are swayed by his charms, including Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), a retired Hollywood movie actress from the 30’s on the verge of A Streetcar Named Desire theatrical comeback, who he sees across the room in a fancy restaurant at the Ritz in London, finagling his way into her hotel room, where she doesn’t know whether to call security or embrace his hare-brained schemes, as he exudes such a sense of feverish urgency that she’s inevitably drawn into his youthful sexual orbit, actions she later regrets.  Invariably, it’s her incredibly wealthy and supremely successful businessman husband that peaks his interest, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), thinking opportunity knocks as he sees dollar signs, playing out like some twisted and demented version of the American Dream, with Marty trying to promote his own idea of orange-colored ping pong balls entitled Marty Supreme, with the words “Made in America” printed underneath the name, thinking this will change the game, as a white ball against white shirts is hard to see.  While Marty is supremely confident, to the point of arrogance and cockiness, he’s also deluded and self-destructive, prone to creating chaos wherever he goes, thinking Rockwell should just throw money at him, as he’s such a sure bet, but Marty shoots down all his offers that are little more than an excuse to promote his own business product, using Marty as an exhibition act to help sell his world-acclaimed pens, a proposal Marty finds deeply offensive, always believing that he’s the star, not some novelty act playing second fiddle, so these discussions are a little rocky, with the businessman quickly losing patience on this unproven commodity.  It’s only a matter of time, however, before Marty’s life deteriorates into utter mayhem, having to deal with one disaster after another, finding himself destitute and all alone, where playing ping pong is the only thing that he’s actually good at, supremely confident in his abilities, just oozing with braggadocio, belittling others as not in his same league, described in the press as “the Chosen One,” bragging that he is “the ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat,” where he’s a consummate trash talker before the phrase was even invented, something Mohammad Ali elevated to an artform in the sport of boxing in the 1960’s.  Shot on 35mm in ‘Scope by Darius Khondji, who shot the brother’s previous film, this tries to recreate the nuances of the early 50’s, with some degree of success, but mostly this is shot indoors in claustrophobic hotel rooms, small spaces, or cavernous arenas with multiple ping pong matches being played at once.         

What’s important to understand is that the sport itself is overlooked, small, and dismissed, yet the film is driven by Marty’s relentless obsession to be the best ping pong player in the world, which may as well be the ambitious pursuit of flying men to the moon, as it just fails to register with anyone else around him, who see it as little more than a hobby.  At the time, American players met in dingy basements on the margins of anything resembling a sport other than maybe high-stakes poker, while attracting large crowds filling stadiums in Europe and Asia.  Yet for all the negativity he encounters, it only drives him more, hustling his way from table tennis tables in New York to Paris, Tokyo, and even the Great Pyramids of Egypt, shamelessly chipping off a souvenir from one of the giant blocks at the base and handing it to his mother, reminding her, “We built that” (a common misconception), where the film is defined by his daring physicality, putting himself on the line, creating a fully-charged persona that lives on the edge, that thrives in adversity, where he’s a bit of a showman, doing trick shots for curious spectators who are in awe of his unleashed talent, as he was known for using a Coke bottle for a paddle, or a garbage-can lid, a shoe, a light bulb, his eyeglasses, while making behind-the-back or under-the-leg returns, Marty Supreme Exclusive Clip - Semifinals (2025) YouTube (2:08).  His pièce de résistance was to place a cigarette at the opposite end of the table and then, crushing the ball with his powerful forehand, break the cigarette in two.  The entire film is an adrenaline rush, thwarted at every turn, denied the opportunities of a lifetime, so he just doubles down on his dream, where his deluded sense of entitlement is distinctly American, yet his sharp wit, brash impulsiveness, astonishingly cruel and inappropriate language, and giant-sized ego will simply not be denied, matched only by his superlative talent.  A narcissist in development, the changing parts all around him are a revolving door of whoever happens to benefit him the most, as he’s constantly charging ahead, like a bull in a China shop, where calamities are an everyday occurrence, harming anyone and everyone around him, but he refuses to let that stop him.  This gargantuan obsession with a dream both propels and consumes him, where at times it feels like a demolition derby, as it’s an exhausting journey built around a transformative performance by Chalamet, an inveterate liar and relentless scoundrel who’s always working the angles, but continuously gets sidetracked by a myriad of side journeys that lead to personal disasters and self-inflicted catastrophes.  The problem is there’s not an ounce of self-reflection in the film, no pauses to think and re-evaluate how best to get his life on track in order to achieve his real purpose and main goal.  Hell, we never once even see the man practice or train, so apparently he just expects to win, like wishful thinking.  Despite spending two and a half hours in what amounts to a psychological character study with one central character onscreen nearly the entire time, in the end we still know next to nothing about him, while none of the secondary characters are allowed to have their own developed lives apart from Marty, instead they disappear just as quickly as they are seen.  What that leaves is a pervasive emptiness that, despite the whirlwind of kinetic energy, saturates the mood of the entire film.    

One of the more amazing stories comes from Marty’s friend Béla Kletzki (Hungarian actor and poet Géza Röhrig, who starred in the acclaimed 2015 László Nemes Holocaust movie Son of Saul (Saul Fia), a former Hungarian table tennis star from the 30’s, who survived Auschwitz when he was recognized by a German prison guard on his way to the gas chambers, then sent to defuse bombs on the camp outskirts, which is based on what actually happened to Polish player Alojzy Ehrlich (Alojzy Ehrlich: The Jewish Table Tennis Champion Who ...).  While there are some extraordinary shots of tournament play, accentuated by some exceptional production design by the legendary Jack Fisk, who over the past 50 years has worked with Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, he runs into one particularly difficult opponent who becomes his nemesis, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, a 26-year-old real-life deaf table tennis champion from Japan), reportedly deaf as a result of the American firebombing of Tokyo, who has the entire Japanese nation behind him, a powerful outlet for national pride and identity in the postwar Japanese recovery, who are simply enthralled with his abilities.  Endo’s fictional character is based upon Hiroji Satoh, who won the World Table Tennis Championship in 1952.  While barely touched upon in the film, Endo’s prowess is largely due to the changed racket design, with a sponge-covered foam rubber on one side instead of a hard paddle, allowing him to place more spin and achieve greater speed than a traditional paddle, while also muting the sound that players take a lifetime to be able to detect, like getting a jump on a fly ball to the outfield in baseball.  At first this flummoxes Marty, as he’s never encountered this before, and it takes some time before he develops an answer.  This revolutionary development in paddles actually became a bone of contention with the real Marty Reisman, eschewing it as “fraud and deception” because overnight, former champions were suddenly reduced to has-beens, preferring the challenges of an original wood design, claiming it required greater skill.  This same argument happened in the game of tennis, as the wood rackets in the Rod Laver era gave way to the steel rackets of Jimmy Connors, as both he and Billy Jean King dominated the sport afterwards.  While this is a typical Safdie Brothers’ roller coaster thrill ride designed to be a crowdpleaser, where it’s relentlessly volatile at every turn, not sure it amounts to much more than that, despite being A24’s most expensive film to date, with the studio pulling out all the stops in a ridiculous, multi-month promotional campaign in an attempt to capture mainstream appeal, however, detours into violence and family melodrama feel like unnecessary distractions, with a less than scintillating and highly conventional finale leading to an epic Tears for Fears song over the end credits, yet the corrosive personality of the alienated protagonist does feel like a counterpoint to the Coen Brothers’ time capsule depiction of the early, pre-Dylan Greenwich Village folk scene of Inside Llewyn Davis (2012).      

Note

Easy to miss is director Abel Ferrara (a dangerous criminal, of course), and brief cameo appearances by Fran Drescher (Marty’s mother), Sandra Bernhard (her friend living downstairs), New York–based author Larry “Ratso” Sloman as Marty’s shoestore-owning uncle, billionaire grocery store mogul John Catsimatidis as the father of a friend, rap artist Tyler, the Creator as Marty’s cab-driving friend, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi as Kay’s publicist who gets theater tickets for Marty, prolific writer Naomi Fry as Kay’s assistant, novelist Pico Iyer as head of the International Table Tennis Association, playwright David Mamet (an actual ping pong hustler in his early years) as a theater director, comedian Penn Jillette as a hair-trimmed, kick-ass farmer, high-wire act Philippe Petit as an MC, multiple medal-winning German table tennis champion Timo Boll, Hall of Fame NBA legend George “the Iceman” Gervin as a table tennis club owner, and also NBA greats Tracy McGrady and Kemba Walker as Harlem Globetrrotters.  The real-life Marty Reisman died in 2012 at the age of eighty-two.