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Simply Perfect

Fantastic!

Best movie ever!

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

One of my top ten movies of all time is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It still holds up 48 years after its' release. Crazy Life is sort of a step child of Milos Forman's masterpiece. While not as good as Jack Nicholson's best film, it is one of my favorite foreign films of the last ten years. Donatella and Beatrice are a couple of emotionally unstable women who meet at a mental hospital. They click on a shared level of being outcasts from normal society. The misfits team up for a really wild adventure. The actresses are tremendous, with a screen chemistry as good as I have ever seen. The script is both sad and funny, with a completely unpredictable story which kept me guessing from beginning to end. One slight drawback is the rapid fire dialogue here. If you do not speak Italian; and I don't, be prepared to speed read for two hours. Even with that, I highly recommend Crazy Life.

One of the key players of current Italian cinema, Paolo Virzì's newest offering LIKE CRAZY brings audience to the sun-drenched Toscana, where nestles a home for the mentally unstable (a picturesque mise-en-scène peppered with creditable employees and patients), there we meet Beatrice (Tedeschi), a motormouth screwball who can compulsively babble on and on as long as she can find an audience, and Donatella (Ramazzotti, Ms. Virzì in real life), a diffident introvert masked by her tattoo-embroidered body and punk appearance, who is ailed by depression and a tendency of violence. Beatrice befriends the newly arrived Donatella, who becomes the newest recipient of her predominantly one-sided pattering, but Beatrice also reciprocally brings a pint of energy into Donatella's colorless life, for the clinical aspect, they transmit salutary influences on each other, a defining vindication of the existence of such communal facilities. One day, during a field day, when their pick-up is late, Beatrice impulsively dashes to a bus with Donatella tagging along, against others' opposition, hence the duo embarks on a journey fueled by spontaneous decisions and devil-might-care drollness, if not wholly realistic, a similar mode of Ridley Scott's THELMA AND LOUSIE (1991) except that there will be no place for body count and radical feminist manifesto to temper Virzì's well wrought combo of farce and drama. The onus of farcical bombast is aptly falls upon the shoulders of Ms. Tedeschi, and it is pretty much up her alley to conjure up an inexorably flamboyant character takes no prisoners in her maniacal loquacity, verbally challenges, needles, assaults everyone she meets or around her, which sometimes feels too specific for an Italian-speaking context, her "crazyness" is unequivocally the driven force of the duo's on-the-run caper, but at moments when sensibility and sagacity is required, e.g. during the conversation with the foster parents of Donatella's son, she can also function as a qualified interlocutor who is not self-absorbed and eloquent enough to make her points clear. Yes, Donatella has a toddler son which she has to forsake due to her unwell conditions, and it is through Donatella's back-story, where clichéd scenario of a woman buffeted by unworthy parents, atrocious sleazes and a traumatic severance between a mother and her son hits all the notes, life renders her completely helpless and disillusioned, but even so, miraculously, buoyed up by Beatrice's undimmed vivacity and "craziness", eventually Donatello procures a glimpse of hope in the faintly mawkish encounter with her unwitting tot, to predictably affix a non-confrontational ending to this ostensibly rebellious yarn against bureaucracy, authority, patriarchy and the Establishment. Both actresses register impressive performances albeit the script isn't always coruscating with golden ideas, Tedeschi dominates in her unfettered oomph and gumption while Ramazzoti diametrically sears in her distressed transmogrification, but it is the former's all-out flair entrances audience, not just being a brazen laughing-stock, underneath Beatrice's grandiloquent veneer, there lies a dysfunctional human being dragged into neurosis and illusion through her own dopiness and those inimical exterior forces, from this regard, both are nevertheless victims on similar grounds, but ultimately, it seems, Virzì consciously cops out to unleash its sociological critique and instead, sends a more anodyne message of a circular conclusion without disturbing the status quo.

I found this film by accident and did not regret a moment watching it. Depression is a maladies of our times. Of the modern society. As well as bipolar disorder, these are some illnesses that people frown upon or are reluctant to discuss. This movie depicts the effects of these diseases and shows more than one inconvenient truths. Balancing between the world of the ill and the real life, it shows how it is to live with a sickness like that and how little distance exists between these people and the ones that are considered healthy. The leading actors were breathtaking. Being able to act as a bipolar in such a way is not an easy task. This movie has lessons in store for everyone that is interested in seeing what these people go through. And as far as statistics go, you probably have some people in your midst that deal or have dealt with similar issues. This is not an easy movie. Don't get fooled by the "comedy" genre. It has some comic moments but it's mostly a punch in the stomach if you're up to the task of watching it.

When Beatrice, one of the lead characters of 'La Pazza Gioia', scrolls through the contacts in her iPhone, we see that she has included George Clooney. What's more, she has written his name in capitals. It's a small detail, but it's typical for Beatrice's psychological disorder: she believes wholeheartedly in her own fantasies and lies. What's more, she's so convincing, and her character is so overwhelming, that others start believing them, too.At first sight, the voluptuous and aristocratic Beatrice is the last person who would befriend Donatella. She is a skinny and fragile girl, obsessed with her son, who is taken away from her after she involved him in her own suicide attempt.But Beatrice and Donatella become close friends, and together they escape from the psychological institution where they are treated. The film shows how they get involved in a series of crazy adventures, and meet up with different people who represent parts of their past. But although their escapade seems to be hilarious and carefree, the desperate aspect of their behaviour slowly becomes clear. When Beatrice promises out of the blue to take Donatella to her son, who is adopted by foster parents, the story slowly transforms into a touching drama. The last scenes are very moving.The film shows wonderfully how Beatrice and Donatella are not merely 'nutcases', as most people see them, but persons who live in their own reality. The perspective is not only how the world sees them, but also how they see the world. Apart from the superb acting performances from both lead actresses, the movie is also worth viewing for the subtle mix between joyfulness and sadness. The mood changes constantly from extreme exhilaration to deep desperation.