Sons and Fathers

Titles are a funny thing when you translate them from other languages, particularly if you're translating them from slang. Take, for example, Scialla! (2011, directed by Francesco Bruni), the second film I saw during this past weekend's Italian-palooza at my local art house. The film festival website (and my local art house followed its lead in its advertising of the event) translates "Scialla" as "Easy!" The IMDb doesn't list this as an alternate title of the film. It, instead, translates the title as "Chill." I suspect that the latter is probably closer to its usage, at least from what I can glean from its context in the film itself. Scialla!, in any case, is a comedy about fathers and sons. It's a coming of age film for both of its central characters, who are, respectively, a no-account 15-year old boy who dreams of becoming a gangster or a drug pusher and a burned out academic who has retired from teaching to ghost-write celebrity biographies. They're both defined by a certain lack of discipline, by a certain vague anomie, by a disregard for propriety. Like father, like son, as the saying goes.

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