Released 2023

SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER 2024 – 10.00 am
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2024 – 8.15 pm
RUNNING TIME 124 minutes

Synopsis: 

This stylish thriller was a big hit at the Italian box office in 2023. An honourable Milanese police lieutenant’s spotless record comes under threat over the course of one fateful night.

Review: Vittoria Scarpa

A spectacular gliding flight over Milan, at night, ends near the city’s central station, inside a small flat crammed with buzzing people. There is an air of surprise party, there is music, trays of freshly baked lasagne and children playing. Friends, relatives and his young wife, who is coordinating everything, are all waiting for him, Franco Amore, to celebrate his last day of work before retiring after 35 years of honourable service in the state police. When he arrives, Franco can hardly hold back tears, he even looks upset. Such a surprise, such emotions – his grown-up daughter is even here, connected by video call from abroad! But when he gets a call from his boss, and not to wish him a happy birthday, Franco has to leave the party. What happens? Before returning home, had Franco really gone for a run as everyone thought?

This is how Andrea Di Stefano’s The Last Night of Amore begins, before jumping back ten days. Ten days earlier, Franco (Pierfrancesco Favino), one step away from retirement, is offered a seemingly simple and highly remunerative ‘little job’ commissioned by a Chinese clan. An honest policeman who has never shot a living soul, he is reluctant to accept, but his wife’s cousin, a Calabrian whose activities remain dubious and for whom Franco already works as a personal security guard, manages to convince him. We then discover that the upright Franco, is in fact related to people who gravitate around the ‘ndrangheta. Over the years this seeming conflict of interest has impinged upon his police career. Yet low pay, rewards that never arrive, and difficulty in making ends meet are the breeding ground for the unedifying drift of even the most unsuspicious of agents.

Di Stefano directs this thriller/drama with a steady pulse, which succeeds in conveying the right amount of suspense and subterranean tension. A good narrative rhythm is maintained and the device of re-enacting the same scenes from different points of view is effectively used.

Favino’s acting talents are well known, while other performances to note are Linda Caridi as Franco’s wife Viviana and Francesco Di Leva, in the role of Dino, Franco’s friend and colleague, another agent – a good man – for whom corruption is almost a necessary double job.

Source: www.cineuropa.org Vittoria Scaipa 24/2/23 Edited Extracts ~ Accessed 2/9/24