A Dinner for Them to Meet

Italian Director Pupi Avati works again with Diego Abatuono. The funny comedian has been saved by Avati in 1986, when he starred in Regalo di Natale, in a low career moment. Sandro Lanza is a failed actor and has a role in a televised soap-opera. He never had the great chance of an important movie character, though he was an actor in the most important period of Italian cinema. Three daughters, from different women, take care of him in a sad period of his life. Good performances of the actors, mostly of Abatantuono, who maybe feels this character very personally, because his own career could have been very alike in its failure. Avati talks about Italian cinema's decadence or, maybe, about Italian decadence at all. Unfortunately the movie seems not complete or maybe it doesn't succeed in saying everything the director meant.