Volere volare

Plot synopsis:
'Volere Volare' may be introduced as a film akin to 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', but if you know of this director's work from 'The Icicle Thief', you'll be expecting much more - which it delivers. Maurizio Nichetti's charming and quirky comedy blends live action and animation in a lighthearted, though cheerfully lightweight, love story.Nichetti's fondness for combining fantasy with reality is again given reign with a story of Maurizio, a sound dubber looking for love. Shy, bumbling, and naive, he devotes himself to his low-paying job by recording odd sounds - people falling over, hammers tapping, wandering the streets of his town looking for the perfect accompaniment to old-fashioned and out-of-fashion cartoons. His brother Patrizio (Patrizio Roversi) is exasperated by his lack of initiative in love and provides a hilarious foil as a director of soft-porn "art films" with a bevy of non-Italian-speaking, lingerie-clad aspiring actresses. He ends up offering to employ Maurizio as a sound technician for one of these lurid films, with the hope that it will add some courage to his love life.The introduction of Angela Finocchiaro's Martina provides the romance Maurizio seeks - a working-girl who specializes in fetishes, fulfilling some of the most comical and interesting fantasies with a tender and accepting smile. Twin architects get to clean her apartment and watch her shower; a taxi driver gets to take her on full-speed races around Rome just to hear her scream and with a fantastic spin on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, a chef decorates her in bittersweet chocolate - and tops it off with a flourish of confectionary.Their chance meeting ends up with Maurizio becoming accidently entangled in the working life of Martina and becoming part of the clients stories. Delighted with his non-judgmental attitude, Martina asks him on a date... which leads to the weirdest development yet. Maurizo's shy nature suddenly becomes implicit as he begins to turn into a cartoon, limb by limb. Fleeing the date, things only get worse as his hands develop ideas of their own and he disastrously presents his soundtrack ideas to a horrified Patrizio.Can he keep his developing animated state hidden? Will he succeed as a soundtrack creator for pornography? And most importantly... has he found love? Nichetti hasn't made a Titanic or Gone With the Wind - but as a modern, quirky tale that implicitly questions preconceptions about kinky consensual relationships, it succeeds beautifully. Consider it a social-comment confectionary with a hint of cartoon chocolate.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
Comedy With A Unique Twist.
What a wild comedy-romance this movie is, with the emphasis on comedy.
The two main characters in this Italian film are a woman whose job is to fulfill men's fantasies and a movie sound man (Maurizio Nichetti) who creates wild sound for cartoons.
He, himself, at the end, briefly turns into a cartoon character!
I told you this was wild and, yes, a bit absurd, but it makes it unique.The woman, Angela Finochhiaro, isn't all that sexually appealing but she's fun to watch and she appears comfortable doing comedy.
In here, she lets men do such things as pour chocolate all over her, pretend she's a holdup victim, scare her by driving too fast, watch her while she's nude, whatever, mostly crazy things.Despite the latter, it's not a sleazy film although certainly not wholesome family material, either, but it's not sex-obsessed and there is almost no profanity.
All the characters are basically nice people.
It's different, and worth a look if you can find it..
A Perfect Film for a Weekend Marathon.
I loved "Volere Volare."  It's a difficult movie to describe, and should not be categorized as simply a "foreign film" or a "comedy," because it is not wholly either.
It is the absurdly original love story of a "social worker," unique in her ability to fulfill her clients' strangest sexual fantasies (but no, they are not *that* strange, for the purpose is merely to indulge the viewer by bringing to life his own never-articulated desires) without reducing the film to trite pornography.
It can only be called a "Weekend Marathon Movie," because that is exactly the function it serves to a T.
The characters in this movie appreciate the simple pleasures of life -- from watching our heroine shower or bathe to decorating her body in assorted frostings and candies -- which brings the movie a light-hearted tone unmatched in most pictures that delight in being dirty.
The key to "Volere Volare" is its innocence, most easily seen in the eccentric sound effects expert who falls for the mysterious woman he keeps running into on the street.
This movie is perfect for long film-fests put on by tired teenagers in the basements of suburbia.
When I want to watch a movie with friends, the last thing on my mind is "Scream 2" or "South Park."  I want something that can repeatedly surprise me; something that never considers the formula Hollywood can't shake from its unoriginal head.
I want to laugh until my sides hurt, and look around the room to see I'm not alone in my amused sentiment.
I want complete originality from someone unconcerned with expensive special effects and blockbuster box office grosses.
I want something fresh."Volere Volare" might be too large a leap for many, and I know that.
But it is the PERFECT movie for anyone trying to pick six or seven movies for a marathon session in front of the VCR.
This is a party movie, akin to "Run Virgin Run" (which is not yet on the database) and, to a lesser extent, "Being John Malkovich" (I'm a bit hesitant to include Charlie Kaufman's brainchild, far and away the best film ever made, in such a specific category, as it is the epitomy of everything a movie should be and not just a "good party film").
I guarantee that if you rent "Volere Volare," you will be beaming by the time the credits roll..
Great comedy !.
Do I have to compare?
With Roger Rabbitt or Mask?
Because this great Italian film have more than Hollywood movies mixing humans with cartoons: it had cinematographic qualities, a simple but strong story, and originality.
American models had only special effets.
Nichetti puts his European sensibility and savoir-faire in a delightfull comedy, full of pretty funny gags (as an other viewers says, don't miss the dubbing of the blue movie!) See it again and again!
It's better every time!One of the true original comedies of the 1990's..
Love conquers all -- getting there is laughable!!.
Well, if you like to laugh and can abandon your expectations -- this film is rather enchanting.
An unconventional and creative love-story which accomplishes what it sets out to do -- move beyond expectations.
Good pace, good storyline, great humor, but best of all .
not Hollywood -- no trite or overused vehicles for the story.
Give it a try -- well worth the subtitles..
quirky sexy fun.
Martina has an unusual job satisfying her eccentric clients' sexual fantasies.
Maurizio 'Sbaffino' (Maurizio Nichetti) spends his time collecting sounds from the world.
He dubs cartoons while his brother does less innocent films with a bevy of beauties.
He happens upon Martina during one of her jobs.
As they connect, he's horrified to find himself turning into a cartoon as the cartoon world collides with the real world.Maurizio has such an unique clownish look and he is a charismatic performer.
Angela Finocchiaro is a sassy broad and a great partner.
It's ridiculous.
It's silly.
There are no hot babes dubbing in their lingerie in the real world.
This is simply a fun screwball comedy with a fun pair..
A comedy that tries for originality.
A lightweight, intermittently appealing movie of more than dubious sexual attitudes (are we supposed to think that Martina's prostitution -- for that's what it adds up to -- is charming just because the clients are weird?
And their fetishes are not so terribly original.)  However, there are some extremely funny moments.
The dubbing of the blue movie is not to be missed..
lightweight fun, but the humor is derivative.
Fond memories of 'The Icicle Thief' (1989) aren't enough to salvage this 1991 comedy by Maurizio Nichetti, which doesn't add up to anything more than a single, admittedly slim plot twist padded to feature length.
Nichetti himself plays an unfortunate movie technician who spends most of the film collecting sound effects for cartoons; he eventually crosses paths with a jaded working woman who services the kinky (but innocent) fantasies of wealthy perverts, and then he turns into a cartoon.
The gimmick is never explained, much less developed (it would be interesting to speculate what the final bedroom frolic must have looked like before Nichetti's animated alter ego was penciled into it), and the blend of live action and animation might have been more exciting if Roger Rabbit had never existed.
Elsewhere Nichetti plagiarizes a few sight gags from Jacques Tati, and includes a lot of silly audio effects recalling the interminable swallowed whistle scene in Chaplin's 'City Lights'.
His affection for classic silent comedy is admirable, but it just isn't possible anymore to recreate the same sort of charm and humor..
Godly State.
The fact that Maurizio Nichetti longed to become a real cartoon was almost predictable: it was just the displaying of his intimate nature, with his resemblance to weird and funny stached little men of old movies, just like Grucho Marx (who ended up as a comic caracther in Dylan Dog's series), with impressive mimic abilities and a never ending sense of innocence and stupidity, in which the latter must not be seen negatively, but as the attitude of never gaining synchronism with the world.
That's maybe the reason why he finally conquers a bi-dimensional life, just because a cartoon is a being of pure light.
It is a sort of transfiguration, the achievement of a nearly godly state, that makes the meaning of this film much more complicated than one may think..
A good idea gets animated and then takes a wrong turn.
***SPOILER WARNING*** There are some movies that are so abstract and off-kilter that you want to like them just on sheer audacity.
Sometimes that is true even when the film has you scratching your head.
Volere Volare, is a bawdy confection of styles; animation, slapstick, bizarre sound effects and the kind of bizarre otherworldliness that Tex Avery perfected.
Yet, for a film with so much trickery, you understand that the filmmaker is walking a very fine line, cross that line and your movie goes over the edge and tries our patience.Volere Volare is the work of a director named Maurizio Nichetti whose previous work I am not familiar with.
What I learned about his technique (from just this film) is that he seems to have a rye sense of humor and a knack for defying all logic to make his comedy truly bizarre.Nichetti stars as a character named Maurizio who works as a sound effects artist for classic cartoons.
His perverted brother is a fellow sound engineer who hires women to provide the moans and groans for porn films.
This alone could have made for a very wicked comedy by itself but once the idea is introduced, Nichetti doesn't do anything with it.Instead he introduces us to another element that could have made an entire movie.
We meet a prostitute named Martina who specializes in very weird clients who get to play out their sexual fantasies even if they don't always fit the classic definition of erotic (some have to be seen to be believed).Up until this point Nichetti seems to be setting the elements of a great comedy in motion.
We wait to see how he will tie these three characters together but instead he throws in a very strange development, which trashes the second half of the movie.
Maurizio begins to exhibit signs of turning into an animated version of himself and, eventually, he does.
Unfortunately, he does so just as he is about to have sex with Martina.
This is an interesting idea as the springboard for another comedy but Nichetti uses that as his climax and we sense an opportunity lost.My affection for bawdy comedy kept me confident with what worked in 'Volare Volere' but I sensed that he didn't have a direction in mind.
This is a movie all the pieces in place with a director who hasn't supplied himself with a direction in which to carry them.
The movie doesn't end, it just kind of peters out.
Volere Volare, alas, is one of those movies that leaves you saying "Well .
okay then." Rating: ** (of four)