Acqua e sapone

The fourth film of Carlo Verdone is another interesting result of the style of its actor-director. Verdone -who is considered by many people the heir of Alberto Sordi- offers an intelligent and never vulgar comedy, with good dialogs. An unemployed professor pretend to be a priest (from a catholic college) in order to get a job. He succeed in teaching a young girl, a young model...

"Acqua e sapone" has a very simple story, it's the story of two different worlds which meet. The interesting point is that the character of Carlo Verdone has to take another "identity" for getting in touch with the snubbish world of the girl and her family, and the girl has to "transform" herself each time in modeling... The film is a comedy but has sweet and sour moments. In an ordinary Hollywood comedy the classic happy end would have been compulsory. Not here (in European and in Italian comedies in particular there's always a mixture of jokes and sadness). The film contains the typical ingredients of the Verdone style: laughs, gags, and impossibility of reaching a quiet life. Another highlight of this movie (of a young Verdone) is the presence of Elena Fabrizi, "sora Lella" (the sister of Italian legendary actor Aldo Fabrizi). Her lines in Roman dialect are simply amazing!

This comedy has not thrilled me at all and Verdone, as an actor, I do not appreciate it. If you then stop to think about the plot for a second, you can also worship the doubt that a man, who pretends to be a teacher and who falls in love with the student much younger than him, is not really the most upright protagonist for a movie.

Verdone started showing the sins of the crisis that was to hit him in later life with this movie.The gags are still there and so are some of the real-life characters (Bracconieri's Enzo is very good indeed). But overall the movie is very poor.Borotalco was out the year before, and that was a very good example(probably the best) of Verdone's ability to portray the Roman way of life on the silver screen, and have people laughing at it.After this movie Verdone was to make some very nice films, but the sparkle was lost forever.Acqua e Sapone is what one may call a "plain" movie.The story is nothing special,the acting is rather bad,the gags old and not very funny.The only good bits are the ones where Verdone and Bracconieri are in the same scene, the interaction between the two Roman actors is explosive.But again these scenes are small and only used as links between the more boring and badly acted love scenes. If one is fond of the Roman dialect then the movie is worth watching for the hilarious antics of Lella Fabrizi, the Montesacro style acting of Fabrizio Bracconieri and , of course, for the funny Verdone bits.But if one is not so amused by the Roman dialect,the movie can be one of the dullest ever.

Simpaticissimo film Verdone. I do not understand why we are talking to the end? This is one of the periods of most flourishing career Verdone, the most beautiful, these are not movies that can please the American public and foreign. These films reflect very Italian to the public, their flaws and defects.Verdone is always followed by the Italians although Gallo cedrone onwards tribulate has some '. The spoken Roman is one of the classic strengths of Carlo Verdone. According to me is one of the most talented Italian, without a doubt! Even its part by naive, identified in the first phase of his films, certainly goes well. His subsequent films show a character neurotic, hyperactive and angry. The film green deserve much attention especially colro who speak about human dramas with a touch of irony.

Really nice and funny and beautiful.

This film was featured in a presentation of movies about "fashion" but it touches very lightly on the fashion business.

The proverb is "A cat can look at a king," in this case, an ordinary guy can look at a beauty. The exposition takes too long in some places, the ending is conventional. A person I saw the film with told me the English subtitles did not adequately translate the Italian dialogue. Once I realized the film was made in 1983 I understood why sometimes the plot seemed so "old."

For me, learning that "soap and water" means "a woman who knows her way around" did not illuminate the story. What I did enjoy was the Italian grandmother and her relationship with her grandson - he thinks he is fooling her, but she knows what is really going on every minute!