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Avere Vent'anni

(To Be Twenty)





It's the 1978, the director Fernando Di Leo can works with Lilli Carati, Gloria Guida Ray Lovelock.  We say again, better: Fernando Di Leo, the great director, Lilli Carati, the brunette already become a favorite of the Italians, Gloria Guida, the blonde, with the brunette she shares the same popular success (here also she sings the main theme of the film) and Ray Lovelock the "beautiful" of genre cinema. We don't repeat any more, because it's clear that "Avere Vent'anni" is a gold mine, a film that on paper can only have a great success. Infallible.

We are almost at the end of 1978, the film was released and the reviews are bad. "Little film messed up,"  says, "La Stampa" of Turin, who adds, "It is not clear how such a little hash was made by a director that was able to do a good works"

Crashed, destroyed, then, "Avere Vent'anni" is in effect a missed opportunity, a waste which realizes (after the fact) also Fernando Di Leo.

Lilli Carati and Gloria Guida, are a perfect couple, uninhibited and passionate, who wanders throughout the film showing all and provoke almost in every frame. Youth, teens, beautiful, they shoot their exuberance on the old minded society, ironically well described by Di Leo, who does not spare criticism to the young rebels. If we stopped here everything would go on, but the two are thrown into a story to sketch, a story that for ninety per cent is a kind of erotic comedy/satire and incredibly in the last scenes turns in the drama, of which the our heroines are obviously the victims.

A final that displaces, among other things unnecessarily and especially hit in violent way two popular figures, beloved by the public. We say "violence" not to so to speak, because the end of  "Avere Vent'anni" is really heavy, really violent, with a scene of sodomy that would have been good, with other characters and performers, in a noir of the good Fernando.

Realeased and immediately withdrawn, the film is cut and re-edited in an attempt to revive critics and audiences. An attempt that fails, thus producing even less success.

Starting from  a reference to a book of Nizan "I was twenty ... Don't let anyone say that this is the most beautiful time of life ... " imprinted on the opening credits, we enter into the life of Lia (Guide) and Tina (Carats) two rebels and free girls that wander the world shouting "so here anybody fuck?"
After meeting on a nudist beach, them reached Rome, to live in a commune lead by Michele Palumbo aka "The Nazariota" leader of a place inhabited by strange characters, such as the ascetic Arguinas (Mastelloni), the drug addicted Rico (Ray Lovelock) and the sly Ricetto (Vincenzo Crocitti).
Here, to help the community and earn moneys they get into prostitution, but with poor results, which will lead to console each other in a lesbian scene that can be said, is the highest point of the film. After the brief career, the two start selling encyclopedias, not disdaining and optional extras for the customers.
A police raid closes the common Lia and Tina return home, but on the road they provoke the wrong people.
A very famous movie the for the whole series of things that we have already said "Avere Vent'anni" is available in the censored version, which does not have the first beach scene, the lesbian scene and the bloody end. To see the full movie you should find the DVD version released in 2004.