DUCCIO CHIARINI: SHORT SKIN - I DOLORI DEL GIOVANE EDO (2014)


MATTEO CREATINI, FRANCESCA AGOSTINI IN SHORT SKIN

Whatever

Short Skin succeeds within the doomed medium of a Sundance-indie-influenced summertime coming-of-age movie because of the way it gently tweaks the conventions, adding little nuances. The aim is the same. Edoardo ("Edo," Matteo Creatini), the skinny, downbeat protagonist, and his buddy Arturo (Nicola Nocchi) want to lose their virginity. But one pleasing nuance is that the stocky, down-to-earth Arturo turns out to be pretty aware himself: he admits his amorous failures and and fibs and knows that Edo's handicap will make him appeal to his local sweetheart because it means he's sensitive and that's what girls like. Edo has a justifiable, physical reason for being uneasy about losing his virginity -- an unusually tight foreskin (this is Italy; in countries where circumcision prevails this might have been avoided). Obviously the solution is going to have to be surgical, and is only being put off by the understandably fearful Edo.

Chiarini's London film studies seem to have only sharpened his appreciation of the laconic, staccato flavor of contemporary northern Italian talk, especially among young people. The pleasure and humor of the movie is the way kids continually try to make everything sound offhand, however momentous the immediate consequences in their young lives. Edo's proto-lesbian little sister Olivia (Bianca Ceravolo)loves to throw around the word "fuck." Their squabbling parents (Bianca Nappi, Michele Crestacci) haven't got time to be bothered because they could be on the way to a breakup; they are no more in control than the kids. Sex is an acknowledged desideratum that's not happening, even for the family dog Olivia is keen on mating with a likely canine. There's Edo's sweet, longtime summer friend, Bianca (Franscesca Agostini), who's soon off to study in Paris. there's the strawberry-dyed, forward new girl. There's a prostitute ordered up by Arturo. Or, for practice in the mechanics, there's an octopus. Something goes wrong even with the octopus, twice.

Edo has just read a book that's "very, very beautiful" but also "sad." Could it be an Italian translation of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, since the name of Chiarini's movie ("The Sorrors of Young Edo") echoes its title? Anyway, he loans it to first Elisabetta (Miriana Raschilla), the forward one of two girls the boys meet who're in a local band, then to Bianca. Both love it. They evidently love Edo.

Edo is understandably shy, but Short Skin is not shy at all about showing young people's bodies, including Edo working on you-know-what: this is both a fresh note and a possible discomfort for some viewers. Others, if Hollywood Reporter's Boyd van Hoeij is right, may find the guitar theme and a possible nod to Little Miss Sunshine irritating hints that the young filmmaker has watched "one Sundance film too many." Listening to the dialogue, I felt I was pretty far from Sundance.

Short Skin - i dolori del giovane Edo/Short Skin ("The Sorrows of Young Edo"), 86 mins., debuted at Venice August 2015; also showed in 2015 at Berlin, Stockholm, Buenos Aires and Seattle. Release in France as L'éveil D'Edoardo coming 17 June 2015. Screened for this review as part of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at Lincoln Center, NYC.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.