Mery per sempre (1989)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Marco Risi

Writers:

Aurelio Grimaldi (novel)
Aurelio Grimaldi (screenplay)

Release Date:

4 May 1989 (Italy)

Genre:

Drama | Crime

Plot:

A teacher discovers his calling. Marco relocates to Palermo from Milan and takes a job teaching in a...

Plot Keywords:

Mafia | Gay Interest | Youth | Palermo Italy | Illiteracy

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Michele Placido	...	Marco Terzi
Claudio Amendola	...	Pietro
Francesco Benigno	...	Natale Sperandeo
Alessandro Di Sanzo	...	Mery
Tony Sperandeo	...	Turris, guardia carceraria
Roberto Mariano	...	Antonio
Maurizio Prollo	...	Claudio Catalano
Filippo Genzardi	...	Matteo
Giovanni Alamia
Alfredo Li Bassi	...	Carmelo
Salvatore Termini	...	Giovanni Trapani, detto 'King Kong'
Gianluca Favilla	...	Direttore riformatorio
Giuseppe Giarraffa
Michela Cusano
Maria Cristina Mastrangeli

Also Known As:

Forever Mary
Mary Forever

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Telecolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Company:

Int Sel

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Anni 90 (1992)

Some comments

I saw the movie 15 years ago, so I don't have a perfect recollection of it. However, I would like to leave some remarks.

- "Mery per Sempre" is the first of a two movie sequence by Marco Risi on the lives of "street-kids" in Palermo, the second one being "Ragazzi Fuori".

- The character of "Mery" was an extremely controversial and debated one at the time. Being a transvestite in the late 80's would have been difficult everywhere, but in Palermo, where the Catholic Church is amazingly strong, very influential in every aspect of every day life and diffused in the territory, these difficulties were at a higher level, because of the involved social stigma.

- Most of the actors are not professionals. They are real "street-kids", that were asked to perform "themselves" in these two features. What is really sad, is that many of them in their real lives kept on ending up in prison with more and more serious charges. Some also died, either killed in some gang related homicides or because of drug abuse.

- The kids talk in a very strong dialect. I am from the North of Italy, while the main characters are from Sicily. When I watched the movie with my friends in Milan, we could not understand a single word, and we had to turn on the closed captions for the hearing impaired (which luckily were in plain Italian) to understand most of the dialogues. This is to say that the director has been very honest in this respect, making the people talk as they would be doing in their "turf".

- Unfortunately, the movie describes in a very precise and realistic way the poor neighborhoods of Palermo, which are not very different from the ones you would find in other large Italian cities (particularly in the South, which is economically disadvantaged).