Toxic Love

"Amore Tossico"(1983)directed by Claudio Caligari is an unforgettable and sometimes funny drugsploitation flick about a group of youthful drug addicts living in Ostia,a bleak seaport of Rome.Cesare Ferrari who plays long-haired Cesare died of AIDS in 1989.Almost all the characters in "Toxic Love" were real-life heroin addicts and this is the main reason why "Amore Tossico" is such an extraordinary little film.The film looks painfully real.Teens desire heroin injections almost constantly,they led mundane lives of prostitution and/or armed robbery and all of them have battered veins.Some scenes in "Toxic Love" are downright disturbing and unforgettable like convulsing of Cesare's girlfriend after using a bad mix of cocaine.The climax is tragic and sad.If you liked "Requiem for a Dream","Trainspotting" or "Christiane F." "Amore Tossico" will hit you hard.8 broken dreams out of 10.

In the early 80's, a realistic view of heroin world with non-professional actors. No messages, no moralistic comments, only the true life in Rome's suburbs. The main actor, Cesare Ferretti, died of AIDS in 1986.

This is an extraordinary movie about the everyday life of a group of heroin addicts in suburban Rome in the early eighties. The non-professional actors are real addicts, and this gives to the story a sense of reality that is tragic and poetic at the same time. Their sense of humanity and freshness, despite the horror of addiction, is unique and moving. Unfortunately many of them were killed by heroin or aids in the years following the movie. The screenplay was written by the director Claudio Caligari together with Guido Blumir, a sociologist who worked on drug-related issues for a long time. The direction is brave and clever, with a focus on human substance more than anything else. One wonders why Italian cinema is not able to produce meaningful movies like this any more.

Trainspotting? Christian F? Pulp Fiction? they will all look like gone with the wind after you see this movie..no dandy heroes, no smart guys, just plain junkies struggling to get their fix.. THIS MOVIE IS THE REAL THING.. with all the excitement, the despair, the dirt and the hilarity connected with it. 24 hours in the life of a group of heroin addicted guys in Rome suburbs. Most of the cast was composed by actual or former drug addict by the time the movie was being shot, and the director had an hard time as often some of his actors ended up in jail during the shooting.. The main character and other actors died of aids in the years after the release of the movie. You won't find in here anything but real life, nevertheless this is the most poetic, dramatic, realistic, funny and truthful movie ever made on the subject of drugs. the acting is amazing, the director does his job well and the soundtrack is "in tune" with the overall movie feeling. Only one problem: you have to be Italian to understand the hilarious slang of the roman youth of the eighties...