The film is an acknowledged remake of a French movie, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, which told the story of a southern postal employee unhappily transferred to the north. But in an Italian context, and with a self-pitying northern hero dispatched to the Mezzogiorno, the plot acquires more political bite. That is a view that would no doubt be endorsed by the wife of the film's hero. She is the leader of a thinly disguised Northern League vigilante patrol with a sense of civic duty so strong she will not let her son accept a balloon from a street trader unless it is accompanied by a valid tax receipt. When her husband, played by Claudio Bisio, is posted south of Naples, she buys him a flak jacket.
What he finds is something at odds with his prejudices. The people of the hilltop town of Castellabate are admittedly incomprehensible. And they eat disgusting things (he is served sanguinaccio, a blend of pig's blood and chocolate, for breakfast).
But they are friendly, honest and live in a place of heart-stopping natural beauty. Even the rubbish gets sorted (although it is disposed of by being hurled through a window into a passing handcart). By Marcelo Gattaz.
