[TrueFaith77]

12.The Invisible Thread (Marco Simon Puccioni); grade: B

“Our marriage is a farce!” declares Paolo (the great Filippo Timi!) as his 20th anniversary celebration with husband Simone (Francesco Scianna) descends hilariously-then-heartbreakingly into a domestic catastrophe caused by infidelity. At the center of this Italian farce is Paulo and Simone’s son Leonne (Francesco Gheghi), whose autobiographical activist school film project further complicates matters as it depends on Pablo and Simone’s upstanding representation of the gay-marriage cause. Hence, Puccioni always yo-yo’s between feeling and hilarity, the individual and the social, the private and the public. As questions about his family stability and the legal implications of his DNA paternity swirl, Paulo explores his compassion and his sexuality with gorgeous fraternal twins Elisa (Alessia Giuliani) and Dario (Matteo Oscar Giuggioli). He and Elisa flirt by brandishing hipster pop t-shirts; Dario kisses Paulo on a cliff. As with Timi’s hilarious embodiment of a middle-aged bourgeois gay man (on the brink of hysteria), these are the kinds of universal experiences that Europeans get right—including the identity of Paulo’s father. Essentially progressive, Puccioni’s farce resolves itself not through familial reconciliation but through the imagery of nature-and-nurture as an invisible thread of love through the generations that results in one unique person. The dignity afforded to which all politics must be based.