Displaying items by tag: Follemente/ Somebody to Love

FOLLEMENTE/ MADLY/ SOMEBODY TO LOVE

Italy, 2025, 96 minutes, Colour.

Eduardo Leo, Pilar Fogliati.

Directed by Paolo Genovese.

Italian writer-director, Paolo Genovese, had critical and commercial success with his 2016 film, Perfect Strangers. With Follemente, almost a decade later, he had a great commercial success in Italy.

The basic premise of the film reminded audiences and reviewers of Pixar’s Inside Out films. There is a central human character while, dramatised behind the scenes, are the various aspects of character, personified, giving their views, influencing, guarding and ID the behaviour of their central character.

That was animation. This is live action. And, there are two central characters, man and a woman, both middle-aged. He is divorced with a daughter. She has had many relationships. They meet, go to her apartment, and the intimate drama of their interaction.

Meanwhile, there are four women and four men, representing the various facets of the consciousness of the couple. Which means then that there are many sequences of interactions amongst the four women, younger middle-aged and one younger, and among the four men, rather older, though one younger.

If audiences are able to accept this set up, there is a drama,  comedy, mixups, interactions and clear and muddled motivations, and how these discussions going to play with the minds and the behaviour of the two central characters.

This scenario was very popular at the box office, less so with some bloggers and critics, some finding the sequences tedious, others not finding them so funny, some irritation with the various aspects of consciousness.

The response to the film will very strongly depend on the experience of the member of the audience in terms of relationships, but more especially of intimacy, sexual encounters, attitudes of sexuality, casual, more committed, the psychological and emotional consequences, the physicality of sexual encounters. And, audiences of different ages and experience will identify/ not identify with the situation, the central couple, the conflicting ideas and emotions influencing their as dramatised.

As with this kind of scenario, some of the women in the group, some of the men in their group, will be more interesting and identifiable with than others. But, there is always some kind of provocation in their arguments, interactions and the audience seeing how the couple put their influences, emotions, conflicting perspectives into action.

And, taking it further, there is a finale with all the women and men meeting each other, arguments, attractions, challenges.

Enjoyment of this cinematic experiment with dramatising the human psyche, and the various emotions presented inside out, will be very subjective according to what each member of the audience brings of their own experiences to watching the film.

(The American title for release was Madly, translating the Italian title. However, in the middle of the film there is an elaborate performance by a band of the song, English lyrics, Somebody to Love.)