I think many foreign viewers have missed the point of the film because they are trying to relate it to their own personal experiences without taking into account the overall Italian context. Young people in Italy are eternally cosseted and dominated by controlling and indulgent mothers, particularly males. They also live in a society where the young must follow the advice and occupational footsteps of their parents because any other career choice is much more unlikely than in any other 'developed' country. In Italy jobs are secured on connections not on merit. Nor can one just leave a job with impunity. Mobility in the Italian job-market is practically nonexistent. Throughout the film the women appear controlling/dominating and/or resentful, whilst the men are all too weak to break away from their influence and strike out for themselves. The focal point of the story revolves around an adulterous affair where a thirty something man, who has meekly allowed his companion control his life and his future, seeks escape through an adventure with a girl almost half his age. (There are echoes of the latter-day Berlusconi here). The relationship ends almost as swiftly as it begins because the young enchantress ends up being just as manipulative as the partner he was trying to leave. Caught between two controlling women, our weak kneed Romeo goes running back to his 'safe' Mummy/Wife whose approval he thinks is guaranteed because she is pregnant with his child. The subplot of his three friends 'escaping' to an African adventure is just that, an impossible and unrealistic dream, which would never really be contemplated by young Italian males, unless their ultimate return to the fold, their mothers and their secure - but dispiriting - professions was guaranteed. Such a plot is sad enough, but it has been made even sadder by my impression that the director is not even fully cognizant of how he has portrayed gender relations in his film. His portrayal of Italian women, and of their inconsequential and infantile men folk, I believe, reflects his own subconscious awareness of the underlying reality, that is all the more revealing of the state of gender play in Italy for being unintended.
Review of The Last Kiss
