Main Cast: Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Carmelo Di Mazzarelli, Piro Milkani
Release Year: 1994
Country: IT/FR
Run Time: 125 minutes
Plot
An opportunistic Italian swindler heads to Albania and finds himself involved with the life of an impoverished local in this somber political drama. Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) and his partner in crime Fiore (Michele Placido) come to Albania with a money-making scheme designed to capitalize on the surrounding political chaos. For the con to work, however, they need an easily exploitable native Albanian, and they recruit Spiro (Carmelo Di Mazzarelli). Easily confused and utterly impoverished, this elderly former political prisoner seems the perfect choice, until he unexpectedly disappears. Gino is assigned to find him, setting out on a journey that leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and become intimately acquainted with the full extent of Albanian poverty. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Review
The cultural identities of two Italians get irrevocably blurred in filmmaker Gianni Amelio's thought-provoking Lamerica, which was honored with several European film awards in 1994. Contrary to the title, the film has little to do with the United States, except as a metaphor. Rather, it explores the perversely symbiotic relationship between Italy and post-communist Albania, where the squalid conditions and prevailing politics cause two Italians, of different generations and vastly different backgrounds, to become homogenized into the masses of penniless Albanians. One is a political prisoner who hasn't had his moorings in 40 years; the other is a young man recently swallowed into anonymity by the loss of his paperwork and the betrayal of his former employers, who had sought to exploit the Albanians for business profit. Equal parts a comeuppance and a redemption, their journey brings the harsh realities they had ignored/repressed into fuller focus. Lamerica has quite a lot to recommend it, but tops on that list are actors Enrico Lo Verso and Carmelo Di Mazzarelli, who prove uniquely capable of illustrating the fullness of a character arc, each ending up in a place wholly different from where they started. Their performances contribute to making the movie feel optimistic and life-affirming, even as it is characterized from start to finish by treachery, sorrow, and disorientation. Similarly, Lamerica rewards a viewer who sticks with it during a slow opening act, in which it seems a little bogged down on a specific moment of European political tension that may not resonate with all audiences. It's not too long a wait for the central story of human struggle and reluctant bonding to emerge, and Lamerica is well worth that wait. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
They need a stooge and choose Spiro Tozaj/Michele Tallarico (Carmelo Di Mazzarelli), an old man in a prison, who turns out to be an Italian veteran from World War II. Easily confused and utterly impoverished, this elderly former political prisoner seems the perfect choice, until he unexpectedly disappears.
Gino is assigned to find him, setting out a journey that leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and become intimately acquainted with the full extent of Albanian poverty. Gino's car tires are stolen, while the fancy shoes he gave Spiro are also stolen by children.
Gino and Spiro follow a group of Albanians who are headed for Italia in search for a better life, first by truck and later by ship. The Albanian exodus parallels that of Italians for the United States, which is where Spiro believes that they are heading.
In the film, Spiro Toiza rediscovers his Italian identity of Michele and at the end of the film believes the boat is headed to New York, while on the other hand Gino loses all materialistic indications that he's Italian and comes to look like another Albanian in a boat full of them. These two plot threads "challenge Italy's colonial past and in so doing force the redefinition of the notion of identity. Who is Italian? And what does it mean to be Italian?"[1]
TV Guide gives the film four stars, finding it "A boldly chilling portrait of post-Communist Europe in moral eclipse, directed with passion and singular grace by Italian Gianni Amelio (STOLEN CHILDREN)."[2] Janet Maslin, writing for The New York Times, finds that "The film's synthesis of fact and fiction is gracefully achieved," and expressed hope that after the screening of Lamerica at the 1995 New York Film Festival, Amelio would "emerge ... much more widely known."[3]
References
^ Luca Caminati, "The return of history: Gianni Amelio's Lamerica, memory, and national identity" Italica 83.3-4 (Fall - Winter 2006): 596
