Arsenevich: Mario Monicelli - Amici miei (1975)

Amigos míos

Amigos míos nos cuenta la historia de un grupo de amigos que sólo se sienten verdaderamente vivos y felices cuando son capaces de escapar de su «vida» cotidiana. Son gente como el periodista Perozzi, el arquitecto Melandri, el barman Necchi, dueño del bar en el que todos se reúnen por la noche, y el conde Mascetti (Ugo Tognazzi), un noble arruinado que malvive en un sótano, pero que no renuncia a intentar mantener las apariencias, y que, además de mujer e hijo, tiene una amante.

La comedia a la italiana es un género especificamente italiano que les ha servido para burlarse de sí mismos y para dar un retrato social y político inimaginable en géneros más serios. Amici miei pertenece a una variedad muy cultivada, las aventuras de una banda de amigos empeñados en construirse un mundo aparte del normal. Entre los antecedentes fílmicos hay algunos tan ilustres como I vitellóni de Federico Fellini, y La grande bouffe de Marco Ferreri. Como en estos, pero con un acento personal, el guión de Germi, puesto en imágenes por Monicelli, es un modelo de acercamiento nostálgico y amargo, a la vez, a la realidad italiana simbolizada en cuatro amigos de mediana edad empeñados en proseguir unas andanzas errabundas y golfas que den un sentido a su vida. La protesta vital de estos seres infantiles, a su pesar, empeñados en prescindir de las mujeres en un mundo de hombres de una patética virilidad antañona, se convierten, por la vía de la reiteración y el absurdo, en la representación alegórica de una sociedad sin salidas ni motivaciones. Monicelli prescinde de los efectos cinematográficos acostumbrados para servir totalmente al tema, sin que su sabiduría técnica logre evitar los baches de una narración deficientemente estructurada, con aciertos espléndidos y baches inexplicables.-- Antonio Lara en El País

My Friends

Necchi (a bar owner), Perozzi (a journalist), Melandri (an architect) and Mascetti (a broke nobleman) live in Florence. They've been friends since their youth and spend every free moment together playing complex and nasty practical jokes on all the people they meet, or just wandering around Tuscany. One of these crazy trips ends up with all four in the hospital run by military-like Professor Sassaroli. Melandri falls in love with his wife, and steals her from the husband, much to the delight of Sassaroli himself. The relationship won't last but the Professor becomes the fifth member of the team of friends, and practical jokes start getting even nastier.

Necchi, Perozi, Melandri and Mascetti live in Florence. The city plays a part of its own in a story where people take life so lightly that any other place would have either imposed its rules on them or kicked them out by now. But in the Mediterranean, and especially Italy, there is plenty of room for immaturity, practical jokes, cheating husbands, meaningless drama and people who look fifty but are five. Our characters have been doing what they do forever; and their city, culture and families are still able to take them – where else would that happen? Spending most of their time organizing complex gags to people they meet and each other, Necchi, Perozi, Melandri and Mascetti are just as much rebellious clowns as they are Florentine caricatures.
A series of hilarious events leads to the addition of a fifth member. Professor Sassaroli seems to have always been that missing part of the group, for the quartet has a lot to learn from this man’s own trickeries. And the moment our four jokers realize that they can’t beat him, they decide to join him – perhaps the best decision they’ve ever made. From this point onwards this man who is approaching sixty, becomes “the boss” and signals the beginning of an even crazier era, with more dangerous jokes, car chases, gunshots and even deaths. These people have a strange way of having fun – but they do have fun. Great fun. And we do too while watching them. -- Angeliki Coconi in Unsung Films