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.

Bonjour Tristesse

Writer/director Durga Chew-Bose

director on the set

director with Lily McInerny and Chloë Sevigny 

novelist Françoise Sagan in Paris, 1955

BONJOUR TRISTESSE                    B                                                                                 France  Canada  Germany  Great Britain  USA  (110 mi)  2024  d: Durga Chew-Bose

This strange new feeling of mine, obsessing me by its sweet languor, is such that I am reluctant to dignify it with the fine, solemn name of ‘sadness.’ It is a feeling so self-indulgent and complete in itself that I am almost ashamed of it, whereas I had always looked upon sadness as being a worthy emotion. Before, I did not know what sadness was, though I knew what it was to be languorous, to have regrets and, more rarely, to feel remorse. Today it is as if I am enfolded in some silken thing, soft and enervating, that sets me apart from others.                                   —Françoise Sagan, opening lines from Bonjour Tristesse, 1954, This strange new feeling of mine, obsessing me by its ... (pdf)

18-year old Françoise Sagan’s once-scandalous 1954 novel is listed at #41 from Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, a remarkable achievement for a teenager, modeling the 17-year old heroine after herself, a spoiled, free-spirited, and attractive Parisian teenager who has all the luxurious advantages, spending her summers on the French Riviera swimming, sunbathing, collecting seashells, drinking and dancing at nightclubs, hanging out at casinos, and napping, where she lives for sensual pleasure.  The psychological implications remain buried under the surface, revealing a side of herself she never knew existed, playing out like a bad dream.  The heart of Sagan’s text is brutal, a teenager who plays with the lives of adults, a daughter who can’t stand the notion of no longer being the center of her father’s attention, and a cruel insensitivity that disguises itself as logic.  At just 108 pages, written in a spare, yet detailed style, the book caused quite an uproar in a still predominantly Catholic France when it was published because of its amoral yet casual portrayal of free love — a hedonistic man openly living with an unmarried woman, an under-aged teenager who smokes, drinks alcohol, and sleeps with her boyfriend.  Published just a year before Nabokov’s Lolita, both books create quite a vivid impression of a bratty, sassy, pretty, flirty, and thoroughly manipulative teenage girl.  Unlike the author, however, who dived into reading the great classics of Stendahl, Gide, Camus, and Proust as a teenager, taking her pen name of Sagan from the recurring character of The Princesse de Sagan by her favorite author, Proust, this movie version of her teenage self has no such interest, as she couldn’t be bothered by expanding her mind or challenging her wits, as she’s too busy being a layabout under the hot sun, where she literally doesn’t have a care in the world.  That being said, it’s very hard to find audiences that actually care about a character who couldn’t care less about them.  What’s remarkable about cinema is that the intoxicating visual seduction can lure audiences into this dreamworld scenario, beautifully shot by Maximilian Pittner in Cassis, just 30 kilometers from Marseille, with very little camera movement, where the radiant nature of endless sunny days against a deep blue sea reminds viewers of Éric Rohmer, who made a living setting conversation-heavy stories under this exact same scenario, like CLAIRE’S KNEE (1970), PAULINE AT THE BEACH (1983), or A Summer's Tale (Conte d'été) (1996), with characters inevitably encountering some moral dilemma that takes us on an interior journey that balances the sensuous color palette.  Arguably the weakest and most disappointing element is the insipid music soundtrack, which sounds like generic indie-film light, just a step above elevator music, with the exception of The Roches’ Come Softly to Me YouTube (3:02), which appeared in Joan Micklin Silver’s CROSSING DELANCEY (1988), an updated cover version of the Fleetwoods song that beautifully blends the past into the present.  Montreal-based culture critic and feminist writer-director Durga Chew-Bose has made a lusciously beautiful remake of the 1958 Otto Preminger film by the same title steeped in operatic melodrama, now updated to contemporary times through an understated, minimalist lens, but with mixed results, as she attempts to accentuate the complexity of the relationships between the women, capturing how they observe and influence one another in subtle, often unspoken ways, and how they wield influence over one another’s fates, creating a storyline revolving around underlying motives, existential dilemmas, and the hedonism of the privileged French bourgeoisie, reflective of Sagan’s own upbringing and background.  This film explores jealousy, love, and breaking trust in spectacular fashion, intentionally eliminating the voiceover narration so prominent in the Preminger version, instead letting the camera discreetly observe, relying upon the performances to convey emotion, where the heaviness of silence hangs in the air like low-lying fog, while the surrounding luxury can choke off any possibility for growth, as the shallow, indulgent lifestyle shields characters from adult reality.   

The rich emotional density of this film resembles Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope (2024), where the opulent grandeur of the sumptuous imagery is most pronounced, both set against the idyllic backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, seemingly inspired by the fleetingness of beauty and youth, where the sensuality on display is nothing less than stunning, where the striking look of the film supersedes the thin character development that only hints at something deeper.  With an updated screenplay adapted by Chew-Bose, writing a coming-of-age story with a jagged center, set in the sun-drenched south of France locale that is perfectly rendered, where you can literally feel the sun against your skin, at the center of the picture is Cécile (Lily McInerny), an American college student studying in Paris, a spirited young girl navigating the complexities of adolescence along with her charming but indulgent widowed father, Raymond, played by Danish actor Claes Bang, the selfish lady-killing womanizer in Ruben Östlund’s The Square (2017), and before that a one-night stand in Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Soap (En Soap) (2006).  Cécile is a liberated female character that is youthful and disillusioned beneath a veneer of sophistication and wit, driven by self-destructive attitudes and behaviors as she navigates the complexities of love, sex, apathy, and existential angst without moral judgment in the treacherous world of languorous ennui.  Jean Seberg’s character in Godard’s iconic Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1960) is a continuation of her amoral role in Preminger’s earlier version of Cécile, but in this film, she is less the heartless manipulator of Preminger’s adaptation and more of a conflicted teenager, where there’s a difference between a potential sociopath and just a confused girl.  The pair are enjoying a carefree summer together, reveling in the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, while sharing their experience with Raymond's latest romantic interest, the captivating but much younger professional dancer Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune), closer in age to Cécile, who splits her time with them in a bohemian, gender-inverted JULES AND JIM (1962) scenario and her boyfriend Cyril (Aliocha Schneider).  What immediately stands out is the sound of Raymond’s voice, as it sounds so similar to the smarmy voice of LOLITA’s James Mason, so morally smug and egotistical, evoking the meditative calmness of a relaxation tape with every self-righteous word, where it’s just hard to root for a guy like this, as his philandering lifestyle is the epitome of wealth and privilege, apparently squandering his life in decadence, moving from one lover to the next, setting a questionable example for his daughter.  However, it’s important to note that beneath the shallow surface of pseudo-profound dialogues lies a subtle degree of sophisticated depth and complexity, as we witness a young woman’s journey into self-definition through her psychological development, but it’s not as plain to see as the stunning beauty of the French Riviera where the film is shot, instead the film highlights the conflict between Cécile’s quest for personal freedom and the emotional impact of her actions on others.  Also, the title, which comes from the opening lines of a Paul Èluard poem published in 1932 (Barely Disfigured by Paul Eluard - Famous poems), translates to Hello Sadness, suggesting an exploration of the opposite of happiness, so the stunning beauty of the Côte d’Azur can be deceiving.  Seemingly living in a world of bliss, where everything feels so right, Raymond alters the balance by inviting an old friend, a celebrated American-born, Paris-based fashion designer Anne (Chloë Sevigny, an inspired choice, given an expanded presence, seen recently in a Charli xcx - 360 (official video) YouTube, 4:24), a godmother to Cécile and best friend of her deceased mother, where the three of them once went everywhere together, the living picture of their own carefree youth decades ago.

Anne’s arrival upsets the perfect symmetry of Cécile’s summer, happily leading a carefree existence, doing whatever she pleases at any given moment, but the more thoughtfully reserved and calculating Anne always has a watchful eye on her, coming from a more serious world where things have consequences, assuming a more firmly grounded parental role that Cécile simply doesn’t appreciate, immediately growing resentful, perceiving her as a threat to her freedom, plunging Cécile into jealousy, admiration, and uncertainty, forcing her to grapple with her own identity.  Unlike Cécile and her father, Anne’s character brings a certain gravitas, coming from a high-profile world of creating art where she had no time for relationships, a life defined by hard work, intelligence, and a well-organized outlook, and though she’s chic, sophisticated, and refined, sharing her fashion sense with Cécile, she is considerably less free-spirited than the original trio, which is why they are all flabbergasted when Raymond announces they are engaged to be married, causing Elsa to flee while leaving Cécile furiously incensed.  Raymond and Anne seem happy and in love, though it all sounds a bit soap opera-ish, with Cécile craving her father’s undivided attention, as she resists conformity and order but longs for the certainty of emotional stability, wanting to be seen as a person in her own right making her own decisions, but is frightened to relinquish her dependency, secretly devising a plan to break up the marriage, relying upon deception and devious motives.  Despite the south of France setting, there’s very little French dialogue, with the characters speaking English most of the time, which feels like an abrupt shock, as if something isn’t quite right, while Anne also transforms Raymond’s behavior into something more conventional, no longer the rich playboy succumbing to his libertine desires, avoiding that “easy life” to which he has been accustomed to for so many years.  Apparently stealing away that free-spirited side of her father that Cécile loves so much feels like the ultimate betrayal, where it all plays out under the surface with a few added twists and surprises.  Perhaps it’s the feeling like American actress Lily McInerny is in over her head, as she never has the same dramatic screen presence as the others, feeling more shallow and immature, like she’s just a kid.  The melodramatic dovetail the film takes isn’t exactly a shocker, as she intervenes tragically in a love triangle involving her father, which is carefully planned ahead of time and stealthily executed, but jolts her into a new reality of dangerously unexpected surprises, and only afterwards realizes she’s taken things much too far, with Anne never realizing she was the target of a malicious scheme, but it’s now too late to do anything about it.  A special bond undeniably exists between a father and daughter, yet how unfortunate that the only love she knew at the time was “possessive” love, wanting to possess the unrivaled love of her father who barely even knew the meaning of the word himself.  The fear of having to share that love with his fiancée, Anne, a woman who is a much more controlling presence, leads to disastrous results, succumbing to an Iago-like game of cruel deception, never fully understanding the damage she is causing until it is too late, leaving her disgusted with herself for her own dishonesty, eventually filled with self-loathing, which brings an end to her carefree life, resulting in a permanent and more haunting sense of sadness.  While the central relationship appears to be between Cécile and Raymond, there’s a curious lack of interest in Raymond’s role in all this, where his irresponsible behavior is never scrutinized and instead viewed as predictable male carousing, yet in this version a deeper truth emerges between Cécile and Anne, offering a belated awareness of Anne’s idea of building a new family.  Tinged with melancholy and regret afterwards, this captures the rebelliousness and naiveté of youth, revealing a world where fantasy and tragedy are interlinked.