GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA directed by Annalisa Piras (UK / Italy, 2012)
This documentary film ,co-written and narrated by ex-editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, looks at Italy as an open wound in the heart of Europe.
As with Emmott’s book (Good Italy, Bad Italy) it examines the nation’s virtues and vices, borrowing the image of the country as a metaphorical girlfriend from the song by The Smiths and quoting liberally from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
In my view, it spends too long looking at the background to the crisis and too little on proposing a way out of the mess. The strongest messages rightly assert that ,if change is going to come, it is going to be the result of the more active role of women and a more enlightened attitude from the new generation.
Lorella Zanardo, who made the film Il Corpo Delle Donne, is therefore right to target her message at schools since the older generation already seem like a lost cause. This is also why it is less important to hear what Umberto Eco and Nanni Moretti think and more crucial to find out what the younger generation have to say. Continue reading
The cover of this week’s Economist is so good it’s worth framing. If you made a photoshop parody, you couldn’t improve on it.
