This blog is based on the paper I presented in the 55th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association, March 9, 2024, in Boston, MA, USA, in a session organized by professor Paola Sica, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA, and entitled “An Exploration of Work through Literature and / or Film”. https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html
In my paper in the NeMLA conference I analyzed the relationship of young Italians in their 20s with work in three recently launched Italian youth films, Out of My League (Sul più bello, 2020), and its two sequels Still Out of My League (Ancora più bello, 2021) and Forever Out of My League (Sempre sul più bello, 2022). The official trailer of Out of My League is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PQM54p9IKZs?si=t4GN2m7FTJ_ZS3OC
The director of the first film is Alice Filippi, born in 1982, in Mondovì, Cuneo, Italy. She graduated in directing from the New York Film Academy.
Out of My League (2020) is her first film, and seemingly her only feature film so far.
The film has nevertheless been quite successful, and with it Filippi was nominated for the David di Donatello 2021 prize in the category of best debut director. It also won the Premio Flaiano’s audience prize in 2021.
Subsequently the film had two sequels, Still Out of My League (2021) and Forever Out of My League (2022), with almost the same cast. Both of the sequels were the work of a seasoned director, Claudio Norza (born in 1957), who has mainly been active in television.
The three films, set in the city of Turin, in Italy tell the story of Marta, a 20-year-old girl, and her two friends, Jacopo and Federica, who are living together and sharing their lives. The main emphasis is on Marta’s love life and her fatal illness, cystic fibrosis. Marta, Jacopo and Federica are so-called students in Turin, so-called since there is not a single sequence depicting their studies. Thus, they are rather presented as idlers. They all seem to have a solid middle-class background, even though it is never explicitly revealed. Certainly, money is never an issue with them.
Marta, the main character, has been an orphan since the age of three, and has inherited a big apartment, where she lives with Jacopo and Federica. She is not exactly a beauty queen, plus she is seriously ill. Yet she is optimistic, sympathetic, courageous, and happy; in other words, a person whom everybody loves.
Marta is supposedly a student of psychology, even though her studies are not shown in any way in the film. She also works part-time as an announcer of offers in a supermarket. Her working environment is pleasant and friendly, and she seemingly enjoys her work, approaching it in a creative way.
Here is a clip of Marta’s work in the supermarket on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PQM54p9IKZs?si=t4GN2m7FTJ_ZS3OC
On the other hand, Gabriele, Marta’s boyfriend in the two sequels, is the only character in the film with a profession. Gabriele is 27 years old. He has graduated from the Academy of Fine arts with degrees in painting and scenography. Nonetheless, Gabriele’s work is only a secondary theme, and we are not told anything about it. At the beginning of the film, he does “small jobs and waits for his breakthrough”, which in practice means, he draws portraits in a park. Later Gabriele’s career takes on greater importance when he, encouraged by Marta, moves to Paris to work as assistant scenographer. The couple starts a long-distance relationship, which – quite naturally and despite their best intentions – leads to sentimental problems and a crisis.
Eventually Gabriele, unable to bear the situation, returns to Marta in Turin. He immediately finds another job as a high school art teacher in order to move in with Marta. In this case, continuing to work is definitely a sign of maturity. It shows Gabriele’s determination to be economically independent, which facilitates a serious relationship with Marta. However, the two scenes in Gabriele’s class, which is full of nothing but teenage girls who are seemingly infatuated with their handsome young teacher, transforms Gabriele’s working life into a romantic setting.
Marta’s friend, Jacopo, is gay. He neither works nor studies in any of the three films. Instead, he is obsessed with finding a lover any way he can.
The true “worker” in the three films is Tommaso, played by Giuseppe Futia. Tommaso has moved to Turin, probably in search of work, from Calabria – which is a sort of a cliché considering the long tradition of southern Italians moving to the North, and especially to Turin, in search of jobs. However, Tommaso is not an industrial worker. He delivers take-out food, and by taking food to the three main characters he gets to know them. As Jacopo immediately falls for the handsome Tommaso, this scene of working life likewise leads to romantic yearnings. However, the romance between Jacopo and Tommaso never quite develops. Tommaso soon goes back home to Calabria, because, as he says, “Turin is a cold city.” For him, his friends are more important than the job opportunities in Turin.
Federica’s case is somehow different. She is lesbian, and mathematically very talented. She plays poker regularly with an aged countess to earn some money. After having won yet another game by counting the cards, one of the players, a manager in a multinational cybersecurity company, offers her a job as an “ethical hacker” to test the security of computers.
This workplace represents a completely different universe compared to the one in which the three main characters live, and there seems to be no connection between the two worlds. This is clear immediately, when Federica dresses up in a suit for her first working day and completely transforms her outfit.
Federica’s experience also offers a view of working life that in this particular film is simply terrible. The office is gloomy and alienating. The two close female colleagues with whom Federica is supposed to work are bullies, and her male manager turns out to be a sexual harasser. As an intelligent and courageous young lady Federica resolves the problems and finally quits the job. The ultimate reasons for her resignation are that she feels “trapped” in the office and does not want to have to get up early in the morning, since the work starts at 8 am. Although she does not have a plan B, that does not worry her at all. As a matter of fact, for the rest of the remaining one and a half films (this episode occurs in the middle of the second film) she does practically nothing, except start an Air B&B with Jacopo after Marta has left the apartment with Gabriele.
Interestingly, the female owner of the multinational, Delfina Meyer, played by Loredana Berté, congratulates Federica for her “stupid but funny choice,” of resigning, which further highlights the fact that work for these young people, or for their senior mentors, really does not have any meaning.
Work is neither necessary nor interesting. None of them, not even Gabriele, has any career ambition or plan for the future (except for Marta and Gabriele who decide to live together), and seemingly, no economic problems. These young people live in a bubble, outside of society and the real world. There are practically no families present except Gabriele’s, which has the habit of cultivating and smoking cannabis and thus does not appear particularly mature. No other adults are shown, save for Marta’s doctors, her manager in the supermarket and Federica’s managers, and we do not see the young people interact with the rest of the society. Their everyday activities, such as shopping, are completely missing too. These young persons live in a parallel reality that is stressed all the more by the absurd settings chosen by the directors. The city views of Turin are either incredibly beautiful and almost surreal, as in the case of a scene in the first film in which Arturo, Marta’s first boyfriend, takes her to a palace that includes a lake with a Venetian gondola, or else they are anonymous and alienating, as in the case of Marta’s enormous supermarket or Federica’s office. Also remarkable are the strong colors and strange psychedelic patterns with which the house of the three characters is decorated.
So, on the basis of these three films, what can we say about young Italians and their relationship with work in real life, where euros (or dollars, or whatever other currency) are definitely needed? In my opinion, very little or nothing. I don’t mean to say that they cannot have such an immature and irresponsible approach to working life or to the future in general; on the contrary, the depiction is probably accurate to a certain extent. But when analyzing these films, we should not forget by whom they were created, for whom and for what purpose.
These three films are youth films. They are targeted to a young audience, especially to a female audience, which explains the centrality of romance. Also, the main character Marta becomes more understandable when observed from the point of view of the young female audience and its secret dreams. Even though Marta is not beautiful, she still manages to get the most handsome boyfriends, first Arturo and then Gabriele, who both fall madly in love with her. Furthermore, Marta is seriously ill, which, in the films has two functions. First, her illness serves to show how courageous the young protagonist is as she faces her condition and is treated for it. Secondly, it also serves to emphasize the unconditional love of the two young boyfriends, who are both ready to do everything to save her and to be with her. This is, of course, too good to be true. Furthermore, the first one of the three films, Out of My League, was directed by a young female film director, it being her first and only feature film so far. And last but not least, the first film of the trilogy is based on a novel by a young female writer.
Eleonora Gaggero was born in Genoa in 2001, so she is now 23 years old. She is both an actor and a fiction writer, and the author of the novel Sul più bello (Milan, Fabbri 2020) on which the homonymous film is based. All in all, between the years 2017 – 2022 Gaggero has published 6 novels, all of them with Fabbri editore. It seems that by now, none of them has been translated into other languages, not even Sul più bello, which surprises me considering its popularity.
Gaggero’s Sul più bello is currently the bestselling youth novel on Amazon.it (according to Copilot of Bing). The film was released in theatres in Italy in October 2020, and by now the film has grossed over 2 million euros. Furthermore, all three films are available on Netflix for a wide international audience, and this being the case, they must have millions of viewers around the world. Out of My League, the first film of the trilogy, has been dubbed in six languages, including the main European languages and Polish, and the subtitles are provided in 26 languages, not only in all the minor Nordic languages, but even in such “less common” languages as Arabic, Hindi and Chinese.
This being the case, the right question to ask is not, “What do these films say about the Italian youth and working life”, but what do they say about global youth and work? Or rather, since these films are offered to a global audience, why is the working life such an unimportant theme? The main character is said to be a university student, even though we don’t see her studying, not even once, or even hear her mention her university. Are these films targeted to an audience to whom work or career will never be important? And finally, what do they reveal about the real fantasies of young women?
According to psychologists, the purpose of media entertainment is “the attainment of gratification”. It usually does not have other purposes such as, for instance, education that is supposed to develop understanding or help people to learn, or marketing that encourages people to buy commercial products. The three films in question are women’s films for a female audience with the only purpose to entertain their audience. For this reason, at every level, including those of story and settings, they offer a way to escape from reality and its tedium, to transcend challenges and injustices in order to attain the romantic universe of love and friendship. These two elements are apparently still fundamental to young women’s fantasies. At a global level.
Marja Härmänmaa
