On Amazon Prime a mini-series in six episodes full of twists, expressive looks and silences, humor and true pain
Over time someone has tried to set detective series in Milan, which would seem the right city for its metropolitan ancestry, for the fog, because they said it was the Italian city closest to New York. In addition to the detective films or the fashionable thrillers of via Monte Napoleone, there was Tognazzi who tempted a commissioner Ambrosio in 1988 under the direction of the very Roman Sergio Corbucci, but it all stopped there. Instead the series on Amazon Prime, destined to continue, “Monterossi”, based on Alessandro Robecchi’s best-selling novels published by Sellerio, an expert in the field, seems to be a positive, credible step, full of atmosphere and without the rhetoric of Milanese style seen from afar.
For now there are two stories (“This is not a love song” and “Of anger and wind”, the second wins), divided into six episodes and illuminated by the discreet presence of Fabrizio Bentivoglio who plays Carlo Monterossi, a detective by chance and by passion, often involved in dirty business against his will and aided by his assistants, Nadia and Oscar; then there are the real policemen, the good Ghezzi and the bad cop Carella, and then in the background more or less organized crime. The rhythm is that of the blues, ours loves Bob Dylan and hates the TV show “Crazy love” of which he is co-author (talented Carla Signoris who remakes a show woman similar to De Filippi) and which will also have an important role in the stories of various humanity that interest the lonely and melancholy protagonist. Which Bentivoglio reconstructs very well with small strokes, pauses, very expressive gazes and silences, never a discordant note, you immediately understand that life has saddened him even if he does not lack humor.
Directed by Roan Johnson (the same as the “Crimes of the Bar Lume” di Malvaldi) starts from Monterossi who risks being murdered, without knowing why, just when he abandons the teardrop TV: thus, for existential defense, he becomes an investigator of himself and others, sometimes even listless but driven in search of the truth and above all of Why, through a network of venial and mortal sins of which the city is a vending machine. The series, of which we prefer not to spoil anything even if it is full of twists, is beautiful because it does not pigeonhole anything, especially the hero of the moment who becomes it unwillingly, “an involuntary winner, in love with the losers” according to the writer Robecchi who invented it on the pages. Monterossi escapes from the well-paid pornographic feelings of pain TV to take refuge in the real pain that does not appear on TV, made up of combinations and corruption, of next door neighbors whom it is better not to trust.
Investigating why someone wants him dead (the red thread leads far) while his beauty returns to the city (Donatella Finocchiaro), Monterossi is a diver in the lives of others because, as the actor says, he is a wealthy gentleman but still capable of being indignant when he sees something unfair and he is not cynical while working in a world that exalts cynicism. It is clear that Bentivoglio, a real Milanese, likes the character and is a genius in every sense, traveling through a city to the limits of a suburb made famous by Testori and Visconti, with its infamous bars. Thanks to an excellent choice of cast (Tommaso Ragno who is also an excellent Mussolini bis in the Popolizio al Piccolo Teatro show) and location, the series therefore works, intends and implies in equal measure, it does not aim only at the search for who it was, but it nestles in the unhappy consciences of sinners and non-sinners.
March 16, 2022 (change March 16, 2022 | 10:54)
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