One of the goals I've been setting at the start of each year is to improve my Italian. Throughout the years, watching Italian movies through various film festivals in here like Moviemov, Cine Europa, and Venice Film Festival in Manila is a way for me to immerse myself with the language.
To ring in 2022, I decided to watch the film La paranza dei bambini/Piranhas by Claudio Giovannesi. This movie, based on Roberto Saviano's novel The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples, made a splash at the 69th Berlinale - Berlin International Film Festival with Giovannesi, Saviano, along with Maurizio Braucci bagging the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.
The film centers on 15 year old Nicola (Francesco di Napoli), who leads a ragtag group of teenage hooligans, as they inch their way to the world of the criminal underworld in Naples. Quite predictably, Nicola ascends the ranks in the mob but eventually realizes that he is out of his depth and that there is no way out for him anymore.
I realized during the early minutes of the film on that this was not a good way to immerse myself with the Italian language as the spoken dialogue is mostly in the Neapolitan dialect which is notably different from it. But just like Nicola, it is too late for me to go back so I let myself get immersed with the fate of these young gangster wannabes.
Although I prepared myself for disturbing amount of violence, the film was relatively tame with the edges seemingly rounded off to be more palatable to a teenage audience. This leads me to mention a previous work by Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, a worldwide sensation that is said to have not held back in its depiction of the mafia. Most reviews of La paranza dei bambini/Piranhas were rather lukewarm partially because of how it pales compared to Gomorrah. This is more than enough to make me put Gomorrah on my future Italian films to watch this year. Although I have to line up something else not in Neapolitan that will help me with my Italian immersion before I dig in to Gomorrah. For now, I will read Piranhas, the novel first to see if it adds more dimension to the movie.
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La paranza dei bambini/Piranhas is available in Blu-ray and DVD formats.
Blu-ray: https://amzn.to/3zBZ3V6
The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples: A Novel by Roberto Saviano is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions.
Hardcover: https://amzn.to/3r2vYyg
Paperback: https://amzn.to/3JTWQsP
Kindle: https://amzn.to/3Fa88p2
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