Checco Zalone 's record-breaking film, "Immigrato," was released on New Year's Day : grossing €10 million in a single day and attracting 1 million admissions across all Italian theaters (it was his previous record), this time not only starring but also directing. The film had already sparked controversy since the trailer's release, in which the provocative lyrics of the song "Immigrato ," sung by Zalone himself, had irked those who had labeled it superficially racist and discriminatory.
Italian vices
Zalone's intention, however, is to expose, without censorship and without fear of political correctness and do-gooders, the vices of Italy and the average Italian. The protagonist is a provincial who fears those who are different and who works in a tourist village in Africa, where he has taken refuge to escape the taxman. From this premise alone, one can discern a critique of the excessive bureaucracy and typically Italian tax burden that bring businesses and small entrepreneurs to their knees. But anyone expecting to see this film to laugh from start to finish was sorely mistaken. There's certainly no shortage of funny jokes; what really gets the laughs, however, is not the ridicule of the themes addressed but the attitude of that average Italian perfectly embodied by Zalone, from whom he captures the increasingly widespread grammatical errors and the indifference that at times could be described as naive.
Right and left
It is, therefore, a performance that spares no one: from the right that refuses to let the ship with the migrants disembark , to the left that, like Nicky Vedola, delights in speaking in an intangible language that is now distant from the concrete problems of the people , up to the joke about the refusal to dock in Vibo Valentia that shocks and outrages Calabrians and beyond. Even in this attitude, however, one should not read it as a mockery of the city or Calabria, but rather an attempt to document a reality that speaks to us of a province that for years has distinguished itself as one of the worst in terms of quality of life . In short, the salient moments of Tolo Tolo revolve around the fact that Zalone plays an arrogant simpleton who is unaware of the plight of those around him and often jokes that things in Italy are no better than in Africa. In the first minutes of the film, for example, Zalone says, while arguing on the phone with one of his ex-wives during an armed attack, that ISIS “ have more humanity than that woman .”
Comedy, but not only
In addition to the main plot, the journey from Africa to Italy, there are sequences of dreams the protagonist has: in one of these, for example, Checco imagines himself as an Italian entrepreneur who opens a restaurant to improve the lives of his fellow travelers, where both able-bodied and disabled people are equal to the point of having the same bathroom. The film's main characters are migrants Oumar (Souleymane Sylla) and Idjaba (Manda Touré, the ever-present female character for whom he falls head over heels), and the young Doudou (Nassor Said Birya) who follows Checco to join his father, who is already in Italy. The theme of reunification brings the story full circle (from the initial escape from Italy, to the journey to Africa, and finally the return to the "homeland"), and in our opinion, it's not just intended to be a happy ending, but also represents a litmus test of Zalone's clear desire not to confine himself to comedy but rather to provoke reflection, through an irony that's at times crude, mocking, and crude, on the cultural and ideological unease that lies behind the fear of diversity and the silent complicity of a political class that fuels, and in turn feeds on, fears and prejudices that leave no long-term solutions in sight. While we wait for better times, may Zalone's satire save (or rather punish) us all.
Carmen Pupo
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Sociologist, copywriter, and journalist. I focus on topics related to inclusion and social rights. I also write about music, new media, and technology.
