It's so strange how we find movies today.
There's a copy of To Be Twenty that's on Films & Clips, a YouTube channel that has lots of hard to find Italian movies. And if you watch that one, well, you may think that this is a fun loving comedy. And I'm here to sadly inform you that while that's the movie I wish this was, it is certainly not the movie that it is.
That's because the original version -- the one that the director, Fernando Di Leo preferred -- is 98 minutes long and the first 90 minutes will not prepare you for the last eight. The version that was cut and played in theaters after that one failed -- and was dubbed for America -- is 85 minutes and all sexual hijinks and fun.
Lia (Gloria Guida, who went from Miss Teenage Italia 1974 to starring in commedia sexy all'italiana films like Monika and La minorenne; she's also in Bollenti spiriti and La casa stregata) and Tina (Lilli Carati, the runner-up of Miss Italia 1975; she's in four Joe D'Amato movies -- La Alcova, Christina, The Pleasure and A Lustful Mind -- and acted in adult films in the late 80s and was also addicted to cocaine and heroin. She retired from public life in 1990 but returned to acting to play an occultist in Violent ****: The Movie, which was dedicated to her as she died before it was released). They're two young and, frankly, gorgeous women who decide to hitchhike to Rome and experience the world of free love.
As the girls say, We're young, we're beautiful, and we're pissed off." That takes them to a commune where they hope to find the pleasure that they've heard of and the leader, Nazariota (Vittorio Caprioli), allows them to stay as long as they sleep with the members. It sounds exactly like what they want, but every man in the place is either asleep, high, smells or a combination thereof. Tina does finally find Rico (Ray Lovelock) while we get to know the other members, who include a clown called Arguinas (Leopoldo Mastelloni) who has been meditating for three months and a single mother of three named Patrizia (Daniela Doria).
This episodic movie finds our two heroines taking part in a documentary where Lia shares how she grew up in a church orphanage and Tina reveals that her rich parents only cared about keeping her pure, which caused her to rebel. They also sell encyclopedias which leads them to meet all manner or strange people, all before the cops bust the commune -- Arguinas is even accused of being in the CIA -- and the ladies are told if they don't go back home by dark, they will be arrested.
Now, depending on the cut you watch, that's the movie. Unless you want to see the director's cut. And if you care about the girls, you won't.
On their way home, they stop to eat and dance while a jukebox plays. Several men take notice and follow them outside and take their turns assaulting them, beating them and leaving them for dead. The movie closes on their nude and destroyed bodies.
I mean, this is a sex comedy that also has readings from the Skum Manifesto and hippies portrayed as morons around ten years after their shelf date. But Di Leo drops the floor out from under you as until now, this has all been played as a humorous sex film. You are unprepared for what happens and I don't think he was trying to make a point about the way men treat women. It feels like he's punishing Lia and Tina for using their bodies and enjoy all the sex they've had.
At once, it's a movie with goofy dialogue like "As you already know, all the ideologies and religions man has invented over the centuries have all failed. But it finally reached this unbearable level when Christianity, Marxism and psychoanalysis created general and personal conditions that are conducive to schizophrenia" and an ending that feels like a snuff film.
The director also made Blood And Diamonds, Naked Violence, Slaughter Hotel, Caliber 9, Madness -- it's all making sense now -- and Naked Violence. I wish that I had just stuck to the America cut, but sometime we need to expose ourself to things and learn from them. I wish this was a message movie, like I said, but I think it's a message I don't agree with.
There's a copy of To Be Twenty that's on Films & Clips, a YouTube channel that has lots of hard to find Italian movies. And if you watch that one, well, you may think that this is a fun loving comedy. And I'm here to sadly inform you that while that's the movie I wish this was, it is certainly not the movie that it is.
That's because the original version -- the one that the director, Fernando Di Leo preferred -- is 98 minutes long and the first 90 minutes will not prepare you for the last eight. The version that was cut and played in theaters after that one failed -- and was dubbed for America -- is 85 minutes and all sexual hijinks and fun.
Lia (Gloria Guida, who went from Miss Teenage Italia 1974 to starring in commedia sexy all'italiana films like Monika and La minorenne; she's also in Bollenti spiriti and La casa stregata) and Tina (Lilli Carati, the runner-up of Miss Italia 1975; she's in four Joe D'Amato movies -- La Alcova, Christina, The Pleasure and A Lustful Mind -- and acted in adult films in the late 80s and was also addicted to cocaine and heroin. She retired from public life in 1990 but returned to acting to play an occultist in Violent ****: The Movie, which was dedicated to her as she died before it was released). They're two young and, frankly, gorgeous women who decide to hitchhike to Rome and experience the world of free love.
As the girls say, We're young, we're beautiful, and we're pissed off." That takes them to a commune where they hope to find the pleasure that they've heard of and the leader, Nazariota (Vittorio Caprioli), allows them to stay as long as they sleep with the members. It sounds exactly like what they want, but every man in the place is either asleep, high, smells or a combination thereof. Tina does finally find Rico (Ray Lovelock) while we get to know the other members, who include a clown called Arguinas (Leopoldo Mastelloni) who has been meditating for three months and a single mother of three named Patrizia (Daniela Doria).
This episodic movie finds our two heroines taking part in a documentary where Lia shares how she grew up in a church orphanage and Tina reveals that her rich parents only cared about keeping her pure, which caused her to rebel. They also sell encyclopedias which leads them to meet all manner or strange people, all before the cops bust the commune -- Arguinas is even accused of being in the CIA -- and the ladies are told if they don't go back home by dark, they will be arrested.
Now, depending on the cut you watch, that's the movie. Unless you want to see the director's cut. And if you care about the girls, you won't.
On their way home, they stop to eat and dance while a jukebox plays. Several men take notice and follow them outside and take their turns assaulting them, beating them and leaving them for dead. The movie closes on their nude and destroyed bodies.
I mean, this is a sex comedy that also has readings from the Skum Manifesto and hippies portrayed as morons around ten years after their shelf date. But Di Leo drops the floor out from under you as until now, this has all been played as a humorous sex film. You are unprepared for what happens and I don't think he was trying to make a point about the way men treat women. It feels like he's punishing Lia and Tina for using their bodies and enjoy all the sex they've had.
At once, it's a movie with goofy dialogue like "As you already know, all the ideologies and religions man has invented over the centuries have all failed. But it finally reached this unbearable level when Christianity, Marxism and psychoanalysis created general and personal conditions that are conducive to schizophrenia" and an ending that feels like a snuff film.
The director also made Blood And Diamonds, Naked Violence, Slaughter Hotel, Caliber 9, Madness -- it's all making sense now -- and Naked Violence. I wish that I had just stuck to the America cut, but sometime we need to expose ourself to things and learn from them. I wish this was a message movie, like I said, but I think it's a message I don't agree with.