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This is a great movie you could see
with anyone! It's a great story about how a boy from
a traditional Italian family deals with coming out
to his family, revealing the fact he has a boyfriend,
and much more!
Angelo Barberini is the oddball son
of Italian immigrants Gino and Maria, who inadvertently
ended up in Canada rather than the States. Angelo
shocks his parents by moving out on his own without
getting married, and shocks them further still when
he reveals that he's gay. But his boyfriend, policeman
Nino Paventi isn't as ready to come out of the closet
-- especially not to his busybody mother, Lina.
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THE DETAILS: Quebecois misfit and aspiring television
writer Angelo (Luke Kirby) is, as he puts it in a desperate
call to a helpline, "so
fucked". His traditional Sicilian parents Maria (Ginette
Reno) and Gino (Paul Sorvino) were already shocked enough
when he moved out of the family home and into an apartment
without yet being married, but shock turns to Latin apoplexy
when they learn that his room-mate, macho Italian cop Nino
(Peter Miller), is also his gay lover. Nino, meanwhile,
refuses to come out of the closet, and, in an act designed
both to please his mother Lina (Mary Walsh) and to deceive
himself, becomes engaged to old schoolfriend Pina (Sophie
Lorain). Will Angelo's family become reconciled to his
sexuality? Will Angelo ever manage to sell a script, let
alone find love? And will anyone turn up to the wedding?
Adapted from a stageplay, 'Mambo Italiano' is a warts-and-all
ethnic comedy about the clash of cultures engendered by
a forbidden romance within an immigrant family from the
Mediterranean - think 'Romeo and Juliet' as a light farce
with an upbeat ending - all of which makes comparison to
Nia Vardalos' My Big Fat Greek Wedding inevitable. Given
that the Greek-American community is rarely seen in films,
Vardalos was able to inject new 'anthropological' interest
into an otherwise cliché-bound
plot merely by making affectionately satirical observations
on her own underexposed heritage - Italian culture, on
the other hand, has become so familiar on our big and
small screens that wry ethnic commentary slips all too
easily into trite stereotyping. To avoid this, writers
Steve Galluccio and ÉMile Gaudreault (who also
directed) give the straight plot of 'Mambo Italiano' an
unexpected kink, subverting Italian stereotypes by exposing
their queer underbelly, and transforming Italiana into
high camp - whether it is the lurid kitsch that decorates
the family home, the big hair ("god help us all, it's
real", as Angelo screams
when Pina's wig-like coif fails to come off in his hands),
the bitchy arguments, the absurdly proud mothers (arguing
over which of their respective sons is gayer) - there are
even hints, if nothing more, that Gino, the grand patriarch
of the family, might himself have produced children out
of duty rather than desire. Here the comic conflicts derive
not from fear of the outside world, but from denial of
what is within the closeted Italian community, and Angelo's
partner is not some unwelcome outsider but an Italian from
a good family.
While hardly unpredictable in its formula, 'Mambo Italiano'
races along at a refreshing pace, with enough complications
and subplots to keep the attention, and plenty of sharp lines
- there is even a knowing parody of 'The Graduate' in the
wedding scene. The fact, however, that Angelo eventually
transforms his coming-out experiences into a successful telescript,
unfortunately serves only to highlight the sense that the
film's sitcom-lite material really might be better suited
to television.
It's Got: A sister (Claudia Ferri) who
never goes to the same psychiatrist twice ("you know too much
about me, it's embarrassing"), a television executive
(Mark Camacho) who ludicrously affects all the mannerisms
of a movie mafioso, and enough camp sensibility to get
away with all its sweeping stereotypes.
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