‘The Last One for the Road' Review: A Pleasant Italian Gem on Drinking Buddies, Aging and Wistful Flavors of Life
There is a kind of sadness that comes from living in a restless state of FOMO — or fear of missing out, as the acronym goes. The experiences you'd squander if you didn't show up to an occasion, the next song you wouldn't hear if you left a party too early and so on. In Italian filmmaker Francesco Sossai's loose-limbed and quietly enchanting sophomore feature 'The Last One for the Road,' lively 50-somethings Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) seem to have invented the perfect cure for FOMO by cheating it perpetually. To these penniless and amiably drunken men, every boozy beverage is always the last one — truly, for real this time, the last one — until the next one that usually comes right after. To them, the party is never quite over.
Thankfully, Carlobianchi and Doriano never come across as leachy, intoxicated creeps (the way hard-drinking older men like them could be in real life) and there is a storybook quality to the duo's tipsy and bickering friendship: It's almost like their bromance is marriage, Italian style. Their everlasting merrymaking might seem warm and fuzzy at first glance, but in truth, there is a gloomy undercurrent to their existence, hiding just beneath the surface. The olden days seem to have slipped away from them rapidly. And the financial crisis of 2008 has probably been rough on them as a pair who burned through whatever cash they possessed. If only they could dig up the sizable chunk of money that their old friend buried somewhere in town before he left for Argentina. Maybe they will one day, right after that last drink.
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Written by Sossai and Adriano Candiago (and loosely born out of some of their real-life experiences), 'The Last One for the Road' grasps its lead characters' aging-related anxieties acutely and insightfully, amplified during the years that you can be considered neither old nor young, like the '70s-born Carlobianchi and Doriano. All of a sudden, you realize that things you could swear happened about 10 years ago are vintage events of three decades past, and time slows down for no one. So who could blame the two for desperately trying to hold onto the present?
While Sossai doesn't exactly dwell on this sadness, its subtle presence still infuses his unassuming feature with a melancholic quality, a wistful aura that brings to mind the fable-adjacent films of Alice Rohrwacher. The soulful and aching atmosphere of Rohrwacher's films is similarly at the backdrop of Carlobianchi and Doriano's escapades as they bar hop, exchange random stories (maybe real, maybe made-up), share life advice with everyone in their orbit, narrowly escape the police like getaway drivers across modest yet impressive chase scenes and order that final drink that will be anything but. On the background of their ceaseless journey is the glorious Venetian plains, landscapes and settlements that seem to be stuck in a transitionary space, like Carlobianchi and Doriano, somewhere between urban and pastoral.
The smartest thing any old(er) person could do is pass on their earned wisdom to the young. While Carlobianchi and Doriano often have a hard time remembering the lessons they have learned and revelations they landed on (they drink incessantly, after all), they do exactly that by taking under their wing the young Giulio (Filippo Scotti), an architecture student who's adrift and intrigued.
Though more agile and adventurous in its structure early on, 'The Last One for the Road' assumes a more conventional tone as the trio team up across a rowdy yet harmless road trip. The reflective themes the film has been playing with gradually lessen a touch too — it feels rather trite when the movie dedicates a significant amount of time to the older duo advising Giulio on women, eventually enabling a hook-up for him. The confident smile the until then timid Giulio wears on his face as a result is equally cliched.
Beautifully shot on film stock, 'The Last One for the Road' still has plenty to offer elsewhere, especially in Sossai's portrayal of different architectural structures during the central trio's road trip. Mansions and modern buildings alike enrich the characters' impromptu and varied itinerary, and some inspired instances of inventive flashbacks that braid together the past and the present display filmmaking panache. Meanwhile, the effortlessly off-the-cuff rhythms of the script recall Richard Linklater's conversational films with characters organically bonding and speaking their mind. (A silly observation about who might have invented shrimp cocktail is especially funny with a nostalgic wink at the '90s.) When it all starts feeling a bit repetitive, a dash of suspense lifts up the movie with the trio teaming up for a petty con while sipping luscious daiquiris.
You don't leave 'The Last One for the Road' with the feeling that you have seen something life-affirmingly original. But there is still a sense of disarming comfort in the film's down-to-earth demeanor, and Giulio's rewarding if predictable arc. In one of the movie's many casually paced scenes, Carlobianchi and Doriano have ice cream in a flavor they didn't intend to eat, anticipating a bitter taste, but getting something sweet instead. Right then, they could also be talking about the aromas of their own lives, but in reverse. And that's the spirit of 'The Last One for the Road' in a nutshell: eager to feed its audience something sweet when all else seems bitter.
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