SSeconds Chance (up tonight Rai 1 at 9.30pm) is a comedy aimed at the whole family and more openly at parents. Director Umberto Carteni is aimed specifically at adultsto the fathers and mothers, who, too often busy with work and daily choresthey don’t listen to their children and claim to know them without saying a word to them.
In the film the parents are played by Max Giusti and Gabriella Pessiona couple married for many years with twins who are about to turn 18.
There is no dialogue between adults and teenagers, we are the usual and there are only impositions of rules from a father, who is a bit too bigoted. Perhaps to understand each other we need to get off the pedestal and listen. Something incredible happens to Max and Anna: a spell there will help to open up to the unknown world of young people.
Second Chance: the plot of the movie
Max (Max Giusti) and Anna Mancini (Gabriella Pession) they have been married for 25 years and have two teenage children who are about to turn 18. Nico and Tina are twins and things just don’t work out with their parents. Tina escapes from the bedroom window almost every evening hers to meet up with her boyfriend (a slacker student in the class where Max teaches). The brother on the other hand is a loner and loves playing video games for hours.
There is no dialogue between adults and adolescents, only clashesalso on how to celebrate your eighteenth birthday. Max and Anna agree to celebrate at home with friendsbut when they return because they were alerted by a notification on their cell phone that their house is on fire, they find themselves faced with something that resembles The Hangover.
The two wonder where they went wrong and think back with nostalgia to the times when their children were children to be protected. Magically in front of some candles given to me by my grandfather Fausto (Maurizio Mattioli) express the desire to go back in time. Said. Done. Max and Anna find themselves with newborn Tina and Nico.
Parenting in Second Chance
Max and Anna will have to start everything from scratch? In reality, to speed up the process and prevent children from missing maturity, there would be a stratagem: they need to know their children better.
And so, investigating with friends, schoolmates, learning secrets and opening up to that adolescent world that they have never tried to understand, Tina and Nico begin to grow. Max and Anna instead they understand how absent they have been in their children’s lives and how much they should dedicate themselves to them as a couple.
Max Giusti and Gabriella Pession. (Photo Francesco Marino)
A light film that touches important chords
«This movie makes me smile and gives me joy – he said Gabriella Pessionabsent from Italian TV for a few years – also deals with a universal topic like parenting. All parents wonder about mistakes towards their children. Rather than giving us answers, we must ask ourselves questions: we are capable of listening in a world so frenetic and intoxicated by social media?
In this context steeped in narcissism, ties with the family are affected. Learning to listen and not taking everything for granted is essential.” Second Chance tells all this and much more, including how the couple can switch off once they become parents.
Max and Anna rediscover themselves as a couple
«In being too neurotic and pressing with your children, parents risk losing themselves as a couple”, says Max Giusti, father of two children. Anna also says to Max: «I feel invisible with you, I feel like a ghost». With the excuse of the spell, the two manage to stop, rediscover each other, and fall in love again. They grasp the Second chance that is offered to him.
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