Le città di pianura

The "città di pianura" is a nonplace, crushed between the mountains and the sea. "Rovigo doesn't exist", says Doriano. No one notices its existence unless they look at it from above. The Po Valley is a green and gray alternation of industrial warehouses, suburbs and kitsch statues. Veneto is a crossroads between Venice, the United States, and Villach. A junction of infrastructures and imaginaries where concrete devours everything.

There is poetry in this film, yet ugliness is not romanticized, it remains ugly. I can smell the stench of Carlo and Dori’s cigarettes and alcohol through the screen, feel their greasy hair. The inhabitants of Veneto are, in a way, the Italian rednecks.

And yet, two rednecks on their eternal last round of beers, who seem to have stopped living years ago, have something to teach to a young architecture student. They kidnap him from Venice to bring him to a land that doesn't exist, searching for taverns long since closed. Far from the cocaine-fueled Venice, inside the worst bars of the inland, Giulio finds the courage to win his fears and discover the world beyond the on-paper floor plans: living the "here and now", experiencing life with his own eyes. While he makes his two new mates rediscover the beauty that can still exist in life.