A Little Hollywood Never Hurt Anyone

Getting dark.

It was another hot evening during a long heat wave and my husband and I were approaching the terrace, where a movie show under the stars was going to take place. The entrance was free, so we came upstairs half an hour prior to the beginning of the film projection in order to get a seat. We are both very cautious people, but obviously not too cautious, for when we entered the terrace, the seats were almost all taken. We moved quickly to our seats, so we would not lose the last opportunity. And then we waited for half an hour.

People kept pouring in. The personnel kept bringing in more chairs. My husband joked that there were so many people, the terrace would give in. Until they ran out of chairs for grown-ups. Then they started to bring in small chairs for children to be used by adults. The weather forecast was storms, but if it’s a free cinema it does not scare us apparently. It was cloudy and there was wind, we hoped the storms would come after the show.

It was a long heat wave, so making fire in nature was forbidden. Anyway we saw a fire on the neighboring hill. The firemen came quickly and put it out. So much suspense even before the movie.

Then it finally started: Follemente was the title in Italian. It means crazy, but in this case in a good sense. It was a cute Italian romantic comedy. The whole story revolved around the dilemma, whether to be yourself or pretend on your first date. The jokes were not laugh-out-loud funny, they were moderately funny, but very original. I haven’t seen many so called European art movies, but from my limited experience they are usually too grim for my sensitive soul. And they seem to almost completely avoid the two genres I love most: romantic comedy and action comedy. But I had seen the trailer and it had seemed alright.

The movie touches upon serious topics of our society: how to bring up children: not give them traumas, but also not spoil them, how to continue to do that after divorce, how to implement the equality of sexes etc. But all these dilemmas are represented in a light comic way. I noticed that the executive producer was a Walt Disney company, that is how, I presume, the Hollywood cheerfulness had gotten in. The movie, in my opinion, joins the best of the two worlds: European art movie and Hollywood production.

Take care,

Helena Smole, author of:

– a fantasy novel with romance Vivvy and Izzy the Dwarf: A series about relationships

– Balancing the Beast, a book offering a bright view of schizoaffective disorder ˗ bipolar or manic-depressive type