As always on New Year’s Eve I was looking for something to see and in one group I came across the film by Mario Monicelli, in the group it was called “Poison Family” (on Kinopoisk – “Snake Parents”) / Parenti serpenti, 1992, comedy was listed as a genre, so I took up watching. The comedy turned out to be very peculiar, it is a black
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As always on New Year’s Eve I was looking for something to see and in one group I came across the film by Mario Monicelli, in the group it was called “Poison Family” (on Kinopoisk – “Snake Parents”) / Parenti serpenti, 1992, comedy was listed as a genre, so I took up watching. The comedy turned out to be very peculiar, it is a black comedy, and on the topic of the relationship of older parents with older children. At Christmas, four fully grown and accomplished children, together with their families, come, as they have long become a tradition, to visit elderly parents in a small town, they bring a bunch of gifts, prepare a festive dinner, go to the festive divine service in the cathedral, everything as always. Mother and father have long lived there alone, mother is still quite sane, which can not be said about the father, who is already beginning to have dementia, although he believes that he is fine, even learning English, it is his wife’s head problems. And everything would go on a rolled-up track if one day at dinner the mother did not raise such a question - they say, they are already old, they are increasingly difficult to cope with themselves, especially given their father's problems, they went to a nursing home, they did not like it there and she offers the children to choose which of the four they can live on, move from place to place they are also beyond their power. Whoever takes over will get half their pension and an apartment that can be sold. And here begins the internal turmoil, none of them categorically does not want to take their parents to themselves, they are going outside the house and one evening one TV report, which told about all sorts of incidents, leads them to the idea that they put into practice, it happens on New Year's Eve, which they celebrate in the restaurant. And all would be fine if the boy, on behalf of whom the narrative was conducted, does not blatantly blurt out in his essay, which he reads in class, as it actually was. The film is not bad, but still somewhat weaker than other Monicelli films that I watched before and which I liked, maybe the age affected him, he was 77 years old at the time of the release of the film, and this topic, perhaps also for this reason, interested him, however, he lived to 95 years, and died not a natural death, and committed suicide, learning about his diagnosis.
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