It seems a lot like Paris: film, plot, cast, true story, Pieraccioni

Ua true story that Leonardo Pieraccioni had heard about 12 years ago. A story too beautiful not to bring it to the cinema with the film It seems a lot like Parisfunny title for a round trip which is better than the arrival destination. Like Saturday is better than Sunday, as reheated pasta is better than fresh pasta. Like the school bus it is better than visits to the museums of the city of art.

It seems a lot like Paris – 15th film by the Tuscan actor, writer, comedian, screenwriter and cabaret artist – is (no doubt) – even a lot better than The sex of angels, the previous. And happily exempt too from lessons in behavior and civil liberties: just an escape film with a beating heart foreign to cultural debates. A family comedy that is quite tender.

It won’t be Billy Wilder, all right, nor «Pieraccioni al Cyclone» – like every condemnation of specification that falls into the heads of directors after their successes sensational – but welcome back grace. How we missed you.

It seems a lot like Paristhe plot

The professor Bernardo Cannistraci (Nino Frassica) has a very serious illness while attending a special lesson at the university. None of his three children – Arnaldo, Giovanna and Ivana (Pieraccioni, Chiara Francini and Giulia Bevilacqua – answers hospital calls. They are used to reprimands and bullshit, or at least to a lot of indifference: the last Christmas together was five years ago.

When they finally reach him, they take his insults. And the task of deciding who will take care of him is said by the doctor who suggests protected foster care. Arnaldo wins – wins in the true sense of the word, because the three they play the burden after a mean game of morra, or something similar. At his son’s house, collecting his memories, the old father thinks back to the promise of a trip together to Paris.

But what to do with hospital checks and precarious health that has also significantly compromised his eyesight. Well, exploit this near-blindness for a journey based on sets and costumes. There is also the track: Arnaldo’s riding school is perfect for driving an equipped camper around in circles. Just get all on top and “pretend.”

Child’s play? Yes, except that the professor wants to stop in Bologna for a Petronian cutlet. For the crazy neighbors of the riding school who seem to have come out of Dogman by Matteo Garrone (played by Massimo Ceccarini and Gianna Giachetti). Police. And the local TV which doesn’t seem to have any news other than a cat in a tree.

A film of grace and tenderness

It seems a lot like Paris it starts with a deception, maybe a dream, a memory, maybe not. A narrative plan of the story that has the function of a tragedy chorus. The protagonists, of a story which however has nothing of Aeschylus, even with the spoiler of death, they are three quite narcissistic and apathetic children also because of a severe education they rebelled against.

The most misaligned is Giovanna-Chiara Francini, nail salon girl introduced while getting a brush-up from the lover on duty (“you only hang out with minors, even handicapped ones”, her father tells her). Ivana-Bevilacqua and Arnaldo-Pieraccioni are instead a little more centered. But all three, faced with their now halved authoritarian father, become children again. And from the father – lying on the throne in the bedroom of the camper – they obtain, without asking for it, a little grace.

So the family gets back together a bit, does a bit of therapy. Between laughter and fake plush ibexes from the Dolomites, and an improvised Christmas in a place that Bernardo thinks is French but instead is always the same old school. At a certain point the mother also appears in a flashback.

Secrets emerge, masks fall, even those of Giovanna’s make up (who answers the video call from her super-toned twenty-year-old “boyfriend” without makeup – heroic like Alicia Keys and all the stars who do activism about being true). In short, children grow up after being interrupted.

The general tone of the film, that of a flight in mid-air, is therefore never too enthusiastic, nor too scurrilous. In a mild way, It seems a lot like Paris warms and tenders without being sentimental: the doubt that Bernardo understood the trick remains vague. At 73 years old, it is also impressive to observe Frassica dominate jokes and dialogues. Keep your distance and cast affectionate glances with just one fold of your face.

The cast of It seems a lot like Paris: Chiara Francini and Giulia Bevilacqua

Chiara Francinithe most searched actress of 2023, is in her first film with Pieraccioni, and in her third with her colleague Bevilacqua. Last year she was a guest in Sanremopublished the bestseller Strong and Cleartoured Italy with Open couple almost wide open. 2024, as well as with Parisit started with the new monologue – in Milan from 1 to 4 February – Strong and Clearwhich comes to life from the book of the same name: “the story of a villager, of a provincial woman with an extraordinary life in her normality”.

Also for Giulia Bevilacqua this is the first film with Pieraccioni. The Roman actress worked together with Francini in Three sisters by Enrico Vanzina (in 2021) and in Feisbum (2009). In 2022 she was the protagonist of The prince of Rome alongside Marco Giallini. While last year he participated in the TV series The Patriarch by and with Claudio Amendola (on Canale 5).

He then turned Water drops And I wanted a son. She was recently seen in The Fenoglio Method with Alessio Boni, on Rai 1.

There is little to add about Nino Frassica’s CV. He is currently busy filming in Spoleto Don Matteo 14in the role of Commissioner Nino Cecchini. However, participation in the fiction had been questioned after the evolution of the disappearance of his cat Hiro, who disappeared on the streets of Spoleto last September (a story that ended from the reward for whoever found him to the complaints, also starring the actor’s wife and daughter).

From Massimo Ceccarinihistorical actor of Leonardo’s cinema, the one of the blasphemy on the Island of the Famous, an elusive character, with the publicity of this film some news emerged about his very secluded life.

Leonardo himself spoke about it at Courier. «Ceccherini has become a kind of lay priest, he lives in a small village above Pistoia, drinks almost only water and lives in symbiosis with his dog. He even sleeps with it. Since you worked with Garrone on the writing of I am Captain (on November 23rd we will know if the film will be nominated for the international film Oscar) is terrified that he would have to leave the dog so he can’t take it on the red carpet in Hollywood.”

While Ceccarini, always at the CdShad confessed last year to alcohol problems and beast that is inside him: «I made my debut at 25, I made about fifty films. I always ate up all the money I earned. When I got drunk it was impossible to keep me, Elena (his partner) beat me and stopped the beast inside me.”

The true story

It seems a lot like Paris it is freely inspired to the brothers Michele and Gianni Bugli, who in 1982 they made their sick father believe that they had arrived in Paris in a caravan. Instead they travelled, almost never leaving their farm.

Pieraccioni tells this story heard it for the first time «about 12 years ago». And that immediately seemed exceptional to him. «They were two brothers who were scolded by their father that they were never a close-knit family, they decided to take a long-planned trip to France. Since his father, bruised and almost blind, couldn’t handle the kilometres, they put him on the bed of a caravan that was going around their farm.”

Once they arrived at their destination, they made him believe that the lights of Pisa were those of Paris.

The song It seems a lot like Paris

It was composed by Neena (Irene Colzani) together with Daniele Pacini (his partner also at work) and to three other people, including Pieraccioni. As Leonardo wrote on Instagram, the couple contacted him with the desire to try to compose a song for the film: «If you like it, keep it, otherwise never mind».

In an interview with Pistoia Report Neena said that «the piece was created from scratch. Over the course of about ten days we played the piece to Leonardo who really liked it.”

Gianluca Sibaldiauthor of the music of Paris, he instead confessed that he had the desire to put something more into the song, “but then I said to myself: no, it’s perfect like this”. And she placed it in a strategic point.

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