Ketticè

Oh, to be sixteen in Palermo with nothing to do but smoke weed and drive around bathed in the golden light of the city! Yet Giulio is not happy or interested in anything much. It’s 2012, post-Berlusconi Italy, and the feeling slowly arriving across the world that’s there’s no future is just beginning to sink in. The film follows him and his friends between the vertiginous rhythms of the night (full of the most fun and most awful songs of the early 2010s and the disgusting drinks teenagers usually have) and the dread of the next day at school. The adults oscillate between trying to make something out of these young people and giving up (one of them is his mother, played by the magnificent Monica Bellucci). Suddenly, Giulio meets Ketty, a girl his age who is a total riot, much more tied to life and who would pick a fight with anyone, and everything starts to gain greater depth. It’s not romance, but friendship, and the sense that one could hang out forever suddenly opens up a world of observation and emotion, of beauty, fun and extreme situations. KETTICÈ is Giovanni Tortorici’s second feature, full of movement, invention and an approach to growing pains that is unromanticised, tender and hilarious. (Lucía Salas)

Giovanni Tortorici: DICIANNOVE (2024)