Santa Maradona (2001)

A Masterpiece!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Blistering performances.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Andrea and Bart are two good friends recently graduated from college and starting their own lives. Andrea, who has graduated from what might be the equivalent of Liberal Arts, finds the grim reality of finding a job that will help him start a career. Bart, on the other hand, is a lazy sort whose only purpose in life seems to be talking about outrageous stories about terrible things in the news, probably. The duo's repartee is the basis of the film, as two diverse twenty-somethings go aimlessly around the city playing tricks and stealing books they cannot afford to buy otherwise.Andrea meets, by chance, the lovely Dolores, a young university student interested in making a career in the theater. Andrea falls madly in love with the gorgeous woman, but there is a big problem. Dolores comes clean telling Andrea about meeting a director who was interested in casting her for a role in his new play. He took her to dinner and then to his apartment where both ended up having sex. Even though this happened before they even met, Andrea cannot get over the fact that he was not her first one. The action is interspersed with the two buddies love for soccer, although their idol, Diego Maradona, was long retired from the game.Marco Ponti, who had written for the Italian cinema, was making his full length debut with "Santa Maradona" a buddy film that should have been better, after all, it has the right elements going into it, in addition to the principals who are appealing in the work they have done in movies from their country. The film is a crazy combination of styles as it kept reminding this viewer about the films of Kevin Smith as well as Danny Boyle in the way these two friends go through life, one wanting to enter the employed classes while the other refuses to take part into anything serious with his life.Stefano Accorsi and Libero De Rienzo are seen as Andrea and Bart. They have done better in other films. Mr. Accorsi is the serious one, while Mr. De Rienzo has the best opportunities to be funny with his Bart. Beautiful Anita Caprioli plays Dolores, Andrea's love interest, and Mandela Tayde appears as Lucia.

While not a great social commentary, the playful portrayal of tension between the 4 protagonists makes it fun to watch. Andrea is purposefully like many other Italian young adults, living the fact of unemployment and getting no where even when he tries; his chance (too forced?) meeting with Dolores is a distraction and test of his commitment to growing up. His room mate and other friends also help drag him down. Can he break out?It's also refreshing to find the true-to-life non resolution of relationships; it's use of language is also street real.

Santa Maradona tells the story of two 'young' men living in Turin and trying to start their professional life after studying at university. Their way to live appears funny (the couple Accorsi / De Rienzo plays very well together), but also sad and void of points of reference. They communicate very well with each other, thanks also to their common passion for football, but their relationship with the rest of the world is difficult, not clear and not definite.It is a clever movie about the difficulty to live, to find oneself identity and to pursue one's interests and objectives. Stefano Accorsi even leaves the girlfriend he loves due to his unsatisfaction with himself. Very real situations.

oh what a terrible movie... It looks like the screenwriter/directed was locked in a room with a copy of Clerks and a copy of Chasing Amy and left there to rot for five years. Derivative, manipulative, full of wannabe "witty" dialogue that's absolutely stupid and pointless (with more of a hint of homophobia)... it was clearly made just because the male lead Stefano Accorsi (already a display of acting mannerism) helped pitching the script. A perfect example of why italian film industry is getting shoddier and shoddier.