The Last Kiss

The Italians are certainly a passionate people. So much fire inside them. And we get to see a lot of it throwing itself forth throughout this film.

It’s a complicated story, though readily enough followed. Focusing on a couple heavy with news about her pregnancy, the story itself then ripples out like shock waves touching more and more people they know. And not about the baby, just with their own stories of love and passion and age and life in general.

I have trouble remembering all the Italian names in this film, but the main couple, let’s say Dave and Jenny, find themselves in all sorts of relationship woes after delivering their news. Dave starts a fling with a girl of 18, though he is nearly 30. He has four friends who are all either finally growing up around him or moving away and it’s their stories we follow on a sub-level throughout the film. However, Jenny’s mother also rates highly throughout as she decides to leave her husband of 30 years. All these stories are playing parallel to each other, but thankfully they haven’t all interwoven and intersected with the others, preferring a more realistic approach. Some of the more passionate scenes have been executed in incredibly long shots in which we watch an argument begin very simply and escalate dramatically into the totally incendiary. In this manner we’re there with the characters and feel the tension mount in ‘real time’ as it were, which is an amazing feat for both the actors and filmmakers. And these scenes run for minutes, not just 30 seconds or whatever, and flit about an entire apartment in a beautifully choreographed manner. Quite extraordinary stuff.

As a story it is an interesting one, though for me it ran a little long at 114 minutes. However, there’s a lot going on and the fullness of the length is pretty much necessary for the story to play out completely. It’s also refreshing to know that certain fears in life are universal and that we as individuals shouldn’t feel odd because we have them, because having them just makes us human.

This film was the second biggest film in Italy of 2001 and it’s easy to see why. There’s passion, there’s romance, there’s illicit sexual congress, there’s double-dealings, drunkenness, drug-taking, weddings, death and awkwardness... hell, it’s just like real life.

In Italian.

Everything looks great here without anything annoying really leaping out at us. Practically artefact-free with great colour, a clean sharp picture and natural flesh tones throughout allow us to concentrate fully on the story. The subtitles are fast, too. Not often do we see three separate lines of dialogue on screen at once, but these Italian dudes speak real fast and sometimes I could almost picture the subtitles guy working his arse off at great speed (which is a comical image). Overall a beautifully transferred picture.

Everything here is great as well. Delivered in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, the dialogue is fast and free-flowing and sounds nice and clear, although I don’t speak mucho Italiano. I understood some of it, but not enough to keep up and certainly not enough to follow the film. In this regard the subtitles really are very good and that guy should get a big pat on the back (can still see him wiping his brow in a slower moment before diving back in).

Music is really nice and classically befitting of the film. Some great solo orchestral instruments in piano or cello occasionally, with the fuller orchestra filling out a bigger slice of the movie. To match very nicely with the video quality is this well produced and clean audio transfer.

Seemingly a swag, though really not a huge batch. If you speak Italian there’s a much better share for you, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

First of all there’s a jacket picture, though this is rather mundane. However, it’s nice to see anyway. The theatrical trailer is first with a minute 32 of it at 1.85:1 without enhancement. A music video for the theme piece from the film is next (L'Ultimo Bacio by Carmen Consoli) and has been shot live on the set during the wedding reception shooting. There’s also some unused footage from the film, or possibly footage made for the clip that differs slightly from the film, so that’s interesting. Also, there’s a ferret in it. Yes, a ferret.

A photo gallery contains 20 behind the scenes pics from the shoot and there are four biographies of the director Gabriele Muccino, producer Domenico Procacci and Stefano Accorsi and Giovanna Mezzogiorno from the film’s lead roles. Italian Art Designs is less promising than it sounds with but three postcard film advertisements while More from Palace Films features four trailers for other films. These include Italian For Beginners, I’m With Lucy, The Man From Elysian Fields and My Mother’s Smile.

Finally, the Italian Only Extras. There are three of these entitled Scen Inedite, Dietro Le Quinte and I Provini which I take to be deleted scenes, the making of (23:11 long) and Martina Stella’s Screen Test respectively. If I’m wrong, Italian speaking community, I apologise, though I checked them out and that’s what they looked like to me.

So, a good batch, with the Italian speakers doing better out of it than a poor dumb guy like me who can’t speak another language.

This is a nicely made film, there’s no doubt about that. The settings are great and the story is good with a lot of tales keeping it interesting plus some very fiery acting bringing the whole thing to life in style. While I had trouble with the film's length, anyone who’s a fan of world movies or foreign cinema will most likely have a very entertaining experience. The film’s popularity in its homeland will hopefully be reflected in its popularity among the Italian-Australians here, though this is still a worthwhile movie for anyone to enjoy. Watching this film we understand that the shit comes down on all of us, regardless of what language we speak or where we live.

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