La Cotta

Concerns the application of industrial concepts to courtship as a means of eliminating downtime, and the way in which such an application risks short-circuiting the processes of transindividuation in which adolescence, as the foggy, confused and disorienting transition to grown-up relationships, consists. Every moment is superb.

Surprisingly for a TV commission, this is, if anything, actually even more formally daring than Olmi's feature work that i've seen (the editing is elliptical and the chronology hazy enough that it isn't immediately clear at all how much of this is actually happening purely in the protagonist's imagination). What remains consistent is his resolutely compassionate, humanistic outlook, which treats the adolescent romanticism/solipsism of it's protagonist with a disarming gentleness.

Eschews the neorealism of Il Posto in favor of a style more informed by the French New Wave - it almost plays like an Italian Rohmer or Truffaut short.

It's a variation on a theme from Il Posto, but good.

Makes a good companion piece to Il Posto, since it's another Olmi film that involves a young man being stood up on New Year's Eve. This one focuses exclusively on amore, however. It's a pretty insightful look at teenage crushes, and the experimental use of repetition is intriguing. The music, unfortunately, dates it rather badly.