Santa Maradona

I just came across this movie by accident. Switched through the channels and got sucked in by "Santa Maradona". The thing that grabbed my intention first was the story of the two main characters: aimless, jobless, clueless. Sounds familiar. Stefano Accorsi and Libero De Rienzo are wonderful in the leading roles. The conversations are totally true to life and kind of intriguing, if pointless. Imagine the characters of "Before Sunrise" minus all the romantic feelings and dreams and you get an idea of the dialog in this movie. The story is rather anti-climatic until the movie suddenly ends and that is a bit of a flaw. On the other hand, it's just further proof that this movie was intended to be as realistic as possible. Life is like that for people like Andrea and Bart. No big happy ending, no dramatic development, just a long monotonous chain of meaningless events. Yep, if you're looking for something gaudier watch "Reality Bites", but don't think that that movie has anything to do with reality.

While not a great social commentary, the playful portrayal of tension between the 4 protagonists makes it fun to watch. Andrea is purposefully like many other Italian young adults, living the fact of unemployment and getting no where even when he tries; his chance (too forced?) meeting with Dolores is a distraction and test of his commitment to growing up. His room mate and other friends also help drag him down. Can he break out?

It's also refreshing to find the true-to-life non resolution of relationships; it's use of language is also street real.

An italian "Trainspotting"? A social satire? An effort to imitate Antonioni? Who knows, but the movie was absolutely schyzophrenic and if it wanted to be funny,it wasn't,if it wanted to be socially significant,you'd better try Pasolini or Altman than this tripe of a movie.Beware of the language: there is some clean word among the profanities the characters (???) pronounce all along.

It was a hot summer night when I first saw the movie, and straight from get go the Italian atmosphere displayed so prominently in this movie just sucked me in.

All the actors in the movie have excellent charisma and presence on screen which is aided by the chemistry between them all. You really feel like you are watching every day life people having a good time rather than a scripted movie. Anita Caprioli is absolutely stunning in this film, from the first scene that she is in you can't stop looking from her.

Now for the not so good. As many users before me mentioned this movie deals with some major issues in the Italian life, such as unemployment for the younger generation. Andrea keeps looking for work and keeps getting rejected while Bart has given up altogether and settles for some street philosophy and bumming around. Aside from that the story slows down towards the end, after Adrea dumps Dolores, and the movie doesn't really recover from there. Most of the fun in this movie was watching the relationship develop, and when that disappears and the missing housemate comes back the story just gets ridiculous to the point where the whole feel of the movie is disturbed and feels as though a different director took over.

To finish this all off, I still enjoyed this movie immensely, particularly because of the chemistry of the leads and if you have a chance sit down and give this movie a shot. Won't be disappointed

Santa Maradona tells the story of two 'young' men living in Turin and trying to start their professional life after studying at university. Their way to live appears funny (the couple Accorsi / De Rienzo plays very well together), but also sad and void of points of reference. They communicate very well with each other, thanks also to their common passion for football, but their relationship with the rest of the world is difficult, not clear and not definite.

It is a clever movie about the difficulty to live, to find oneself identity and to pursue one's interests and objectives. Stefano Accorsi even leaves the girlfriend he loves due to his unsatisfaction with himself. Very real situations.