Benvenuti al sud

This is a curiously lame re-versioning of a French film, which was much more successful on many levels, the most important being the direction. WTTS is an awkward experience for this audience member; it's full of good farcical ideas and nice, broad characters, but it never really comes to life, because the staging, the timing and the acting all miss the mark. You can see how good it could have been, how many of the scenes, played differently would have worked. Alas it's mostly flat, overly sentimental but cheerful. The only actor in the cast with whom I'm familiar is Angela Finocchiaro, whom I very much admired in "Don't Tell" - in which she gave a funny and moving performance. Here she's not given much to do beyond acting out the demands of of her caricatured character and the unlikely turns of the plot. I kept expecting her to be funny, but I was always disappointed. I attribute this to poor writing and even poorer direction. It's often extraordinary how certain scenes are staged - as though the director is anti-comedy.

Welcome to the South The final installment of the Metro-Detroit Italian Film Festival (2012) featured director Luca Minero's Benvenuti al sud, Welcome to the South (2011). The venue of Royal Oak's new Emagine Theatre was filled to capacity and resulted in the always unfortunate scenario of turning away hundreds of would be patrons. The film begins with Alberto Colombo (Claudio Bisso) as a civil servant of the Italian-Postale. Alberto has been passed up for promotion to a coveted Milan position and following a comical yet ill-fated attempt to secure another such opening is assigned to two years postale purgatory in Italy's southern region. Alberto's wife Silvia (Angela Finocchiaro) chooses to remain in the civilized north while Alberto is subjected to his penance. The ensuing journey is a farcical romp through social stereotypes and false assumptions which leads Alberto to re-evaluate his own system of beliefs. Steeped in Italian cinemas rich history of neo-realism and romanticism it seems that amore' is the parallel undercurrent to the film. Love reigns supreme beneath the comical veneer, as southern mama's boy Mattia Volpe (Alessandro Siani) garners courage to express his affections for local bellissima Maria (Valentina Lodovini). Alberto and Silvia teeter on the brink of their faltering relationship and her brave trip to the south will either break them or change them forever. A wonderful introspective on pre-conceived notions that prove false wrong when people understand one another combined with breathtaking scenery of Italy's southern coastal regions make this a film for all the world to enjoy. The sequel Welcome to the North (2012) should prove to be equally entertaining as the noteworthy cast of Alberto's friends invade the northern regions. Caio!

It's a sentimental comedy - a bit pathetic. This is the limit of the current cinema in Italy. we have no sense of irony, then you can have only from one side the desperation of Gomorrah, and on the other "plastic" comedies like this one. It is very difficult to find popular movies comparable with the old Italian masterpieces. The characters are not credible and not funny. This movie depicts a more stereotypical vision of the Italian than the Sopranos' TV series - By the way, it is curios that a TV-serial made in US is more effective to depict some of the Italian culture than movies made in Italy. As Italians, we have no way to reflect to our conditions, improve ourselves and avoid to be stuck to the same old stereotypes: Pizza,Sole,Mandolino with the difference that in this movie Mafia is just a fiction - a set inside the set just to save Alberto's marriage - this is very sad, and not funny at all.

I've just watched this movie as part of the Italian Film Festival held yearly at Washington University in St.Louis, Missouri, HTTP://www.italianfilmfestivalstlouis.com/. The film was projected in Italian, subtitled in English. This is a solid comedy. I laughed practically all the time. It was judged the best movie of the festival, by a mixed audience of Italians and Americans. It is not sex-oriented, even if Valentina Lodovini (Maria) shows considerable amount of her upper-front anatomy; that's just natural in Italy. And it's really witty, and well structured for creating a crescendo of humor. I haven't seen the original French version, so I don't know whether the credit for this is due to the Italian production or not. Italians in Italy might not like this movie because it seems to tread too lightly on very serious things, like the violence, the garbage, and other known problems in the Naples' area. But, you know? It's a comedy! And, contrary to what some Italians in Italy feel, this movie shows that North people when forced to confront their prejudices they might discover that they are also good, nice, friendly South people out there. Italians at the Film festival actually loved this movie, while hated the two that showed a more "realistic" view of the Neapolitan way of life. The reason is that a movie is also an ambassador for the country of origin. Nobody outside Italy wants to see, not even a part of their country always portrayed as a cesspool of garbage and violence, without showing the rest of such community. For me the message of this movie is universal, not just Italian. In all human confrontations, the other side is also human. And if we learn how to walk in the shoes of the "other", looking at life through the "other"'s eyes, we may find that we are not different at all. I didn't give it a full 10 because the process of making it oh-so-funny, made some situations, and the personal relationships (husband-wife, boyfriend-girlfriend, etc.) become a bit unreal and stereotypical. But I laughed! Finally, I wonder where did they found so many practitioners, at the "truly-incomprehensible-master level", of the Neapolitan dialect...

Very nice and funny movie that manages to disassemble some stereotypes of the south keeping others in a very funny way. A film that makes everyone laugh and teaches great values such as friendship.