08/08/2023 - Italian director Simone Bozzelli offers up a utopian universe inhabited by super sensitive characters who use tenderness as a means to rebel against the world

Simone Bozzelli, one of the most promising and electrifying new authors in Italian cinema today, made his name among audiences and critics alike with a series of powerful and moving short films, including Amateur and J’ador, presented in Venice’s Critics’ Week, and Giochi, which was selected in the Locarno Film Festival’s Pardi di Domani competition, but also thanks to the seductive and now cult music video "Wanna Be Your Slave" by Måneskin. The young director is now returning to Locarno, specifically, the International Competition, to present his explosive first feature film Patagonia [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a cruel but tender odyssey which winds its way under our skin. It’s a necessary, courageous and aesthetically majestic testimonial about a forgotten part of Italy, populated by staggeringly endearing characters.

Patagonia tells the story of twenty-year-old Yuri (a heart-breaking Andrea Furto) who’s protected to the extreme by a matriarchal family hailing from a small village in the province of Abruzzo, and who decides, after an encounter with the bewitching clown-torturer Agostino (the brilliant Augusto Maria Russi, in his big screen debut), to emancipate himself and take his destiny in hand. It’s a decision which becomes synonymous with independence as well as discovery: the latter in terms of his identity and sexuality, but also the role he wants to play when performing in a duo with Augusto, as well as on the cruel stage of life. Theirs is a nomadic existence made up of wheeler-dealing, lucky encounters and a desire for freedom which sees them exploring the Italian South in a camper van. They stop over in a trailer park which transforms into an illegal rave at night-time, populated by hybrid creatures who veer between hallucinogenic paradises and fighting for their own survival. At the heart of this young segment of humanity who have chosen to live life according to their own rules are Yuri and Agostino, an unlikely pair who embark on an ambiguous and stifling relationship revolving around power games which slowly grow in intensity, cynicism and cruelty.

Despite the violence which envelops our two protagonists like a blanket of smoke so thick it obscures all escape routes, the relationship they share isn’t lacking in moments of affection which are so sincere and intense when we witness them that everything else is forgotten. Patagonia isn’t just the story of a toxic, romantic relationship based on a master-slave dialectic, it’s also a much-needed portrait of a kind of diversity which makes no apologies and expresses itself in its full destructive force.

Who are we to judge? What does it mean to love, to allow ourselves to be drawn into a vortex of emotions which burn in our chests like glowing embers? Surrounded by their fellow adventurers, Patagonia’s two protagonists claim their right to a diversity which doesn’t aspire to social integration and which makes no apologies for not “behaving properly”. What they want is to live their emotions to the full, whether positive or negative, without limits and with the unscrupulousness of those who have nothing left to lose.

With rare respect and sensitivity, Bozzelli observes the bodies of these forgotten youngsters up-close as they claim their right to exist and to express their own irrepressible diversity with force, unmindful of judgements from those who live their lives within the prison of so-called respectability. Bozzelli’s Italy is a far cry from the country aspired to by Meloni’s government, an Italy which feeds on broken dreams, artificial paradises and romantic relationships revolving around self-destruction. And yet, from among the ruins of this crumbling world, there’s a light which has never shone brighter.

Patagonia was produced by Wildside in co-production with Vision Distribution and Rai Cinema. Vision Distribution are also handling international sales.

(Translated from Italian)