Piso pisello

PISO PISELLO is an off-beat Italian comedy whose plot sounds totally improbable and utterly tasteless. Improbable it is; tasteless it is not. In fact it is a captivating charmer about a 13-year-old boy named Oliviero who discovers that he has become a father. Sex, however, is only a peripheral matter here, needed to set the plot in motion and tactfully dispensed with once that has occurred.

Oliviero's parents are a wacky, weatherbeaten pair of hippie-bohemian types. The father is a painter who doesn't paint any more because Andy Warhol has stolen his thunder. His mother is perpetually out of touch with the newest fads. She laments being into macrobiotics when everyone else is into barbecues. Played by Valeria D'Obici, the ugly woman of Scola's "Passion of Love', she is a sight to behold. The parents entertain a menagerie of kooky friends, and at one of their parties a six-foot American model slips into the boy's bed and seduces him. He is barely aware of what is happening. A few weeks later the woman announces that she is pregnant, moves in with the family, has a baby boy, then disappears for two years. When she returns to pursue a career as a model, she drops the child in Oliviero's lap, so to speak. The second half of the film becomes a delightful odyssey as Oliviero and his little son (the big pea and little "Sweetpea" of the title) drift together through modern Milan and he tries to take care of the boy in a society that is hostile and haywire. Like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in "The Kid", Luca Porro and the adorable little Fabio Peraboni draw us into a world of charm and whimsy that is very pleasant, very clever, and very well sustained.