The Legendary Giulia and Other Miracles

Noi e la Giulia is first and foremost a comedy film, one that harks back to a rather more innocent age of Italian comedy, but it also has something to say about the present day, the kind of lives we lead and the difficulties those of an in-between age face.

Four men around the age of forty have looked at their lives and decided that they are pretty much failures. When his father dies, Diego - an unambitious and timid car salesman feels that he has been a disappointment to the old man, and decides to finally follow through on his long term ambition to buy some property in the country for a business venture. Two other men however have reached the same conclusion and have arrived to look at the property at the same time; Fausto (director Eduardo Leo), a fascist-leaning shopping channel watch salesman with mounting debts; and Claudio, who has run his family grocery business into the ground and lost his wife in the process.

The asking price for the farmhouse comes in far above their budget and it also needs a lot of work, so they agree to go into a joint venture, splitting the business three ways in the hope of establishing a hotel/restaurant getaway in the country. They are still not well equipped for the challenges they face in getting this venture off the ground however until Sergio turns up. His disappointment in life is the failure of Communism, but as he is owed money by Fausto, he demands a share in the business instead. He also proves to be a handy man in another way, when a camorrista turns up and demands protection money even before they are ready for their first customers.

Locking Vito up in the cellar until they can make a profit and sell-up doesn't seem to be the greatest idea ever, particularly when other mafia come looking for him, making further demands for money. Their method of hiding Vito's car - the Giulia of the title - by burying it in a hole that was dug for the pool, also proves to be a bit of a mistake as the car's dodgy stereo occasionally blares out pieces of classical music from underground. This however becomes something of a tourist attraction, a natural curiousity with a supernatural story attached to it that eventually draws in the clients.

It's very much a character comedy with standard types of losers making good, and the film is at least well rounded in that respect, with not only the four main men but Vito, the mobsters, Elisa their cleaner, and Abu a Ghanan immigrant, each with their own issues to resolve and all contributing to the colourful comic situations. The comedy of fools running up against the camorra makes it sound like I Soliti Ignoti meets Gomorrah, but it's a lot more light-hearted and innocent than that - more like Smetto Quando Voglio meets The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Actor/director Eduardo Leo handles the tone well, the comedy inoffensive, a little bit silly, but often quite amusing.