A pair of broke middle-aged men befriend a shy architecture student as they embark on a booze-fuelled road trip across Italy.
Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Francesco Sossai
Starring: Filippo Scotti, Sergio Romano, Pierpaolo Capovilla, Roberto Citran, Andrea Pennacchi
"One drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough," as the instructive maxim of Alcoholics Anonymous runs. And even if you're not victim to substance dependence, we can recognise the truth in the dictum: it's a sneaky little intoxicant alcohol is, tricking the brain via a dopamine surge which demands more rather than satisfies, leaving the drinker with a glass that is perpetually half empty. We've all been there as the night slips away from us, and what was initially enhanced curdles into fragmented recalls and bilious bedtimes... And, yes, alright, a dry mouthed morning wherein, irony of ironies, you might end up writing a review of a heartbreakingly accurate film - Francesco Sossai and co-writer Adriano Candiago's The Last One for the Road - about a couple of aged sots melancholically drinking their way across Italy.
We first meet Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) in the former's Jaguar S-Type (I don't know why but Jags always seem like a drinker's car). It is late at night, and the vehicle is stationary in a town square, its two occupants slumped fast asleep in their crumpled suits as other cars occasionally edge their way around them. The image is a droll rendering of The Last One for the Road's ensuing narrative: this is a road movie where the protagonists are spiritually mired, fixated on the drunken moment. To emphasise the symbolism, cinematographer Massimiliano Kuveiller's camera swoops and creeps about a mise-en-scene that is vividly lit in stop/go noirish red and green (in a film which is essentially in a "Drinking for Godot" mode, The Last One for the Road's visuals are always sharp and filmic). They inelegantly wake, and there is only one thing to do: go and get another drink.
In a sequence of cinematic discomfort the 100mm lens come out for a arrangement of intense close-ups as Carlobianchi and Doriano commiserate over a few bottles of beer. Those faces, man. Capovilla's visage is visibly ravaged by deep pock marks, his skin like a puckered dish rag with broken Minstrels teeth... All of human life is there in unflinching direct address to camera. In a neat joke it transpires that the "weird" beer the two are drinking, a platoon of dead soldiers lined up between them, turns out to be non-alcoholic as part of the establishment's after-hours licence: it took a six pack before either realised. A feature of The Last One for the Road's affecting emotional intelligence is how eloquently it captures the cumulative dynamic of drinking, that formless, automatic compulsion to just keep going.
The nominal plot of the film involves our ubriaco duo attempting to track down an old pal, and consequently the harboured ill-gotten gains from their shared counterfeit sunglasses business, before having a final drink in Venice. It's a shaggy hair of the dog tale though, with a looping narrative and opportune side quests which will be familiar to anyone who has been on a bender. A drunk man needs a focus, after all, whether it's a pontification, singing along with the entertainment, or which bar to next drink in. A justification arrives in the form of Giulio (Filippo Scotti), a younger lovelorn lad who falls in with Carlobianchi and Doriano, the older men seizing upon him as a new drinking buddy, one that they can eagerly regale with their soggy barroom wisdom. The Italian settings, both urban and rural, are effortlessly to die for, and the growing conviviality between the three leads is deeply warming and convincing as they embark upon their picaresque journey.
A few moments ago, when I was scrolling Imdb looking for the DoP's name, I scanned a couple of user reviews which claimed that The Last One for the Road was "sad." With respect I disagree. If there is sorrow in The Last One for the Road it is of the bittersweet kind where each fuck up, squabble, or pratfell is balanced by incidents of friendship and kindness and last-ditch celebrations of being alive. Not to sound glib, as I am aware of how corrosive substance abuse can be, but Sossai's film is far too mature to configure alcohol as necessarily "bad": processed ethanol catalyses Carlobianchi and Doriano's clumsy behaviour but also cements their true friendship. Instead, The Last One for the Road articulates the drunken state; the wash of nostalgia, the braggadocio hopes for the future, and the occasional spikes of clarity where you realise that it's the moments in between that really matter and count. This film really is a bottomless joy.
The Last One for the Road is in UK/ROI cinemas from July 10th.
