Paradiso

A journey of initiation, in search of an impossible interview, in the meandering turns of a secret garden from which, once entered, one cannot exit. A series of hilarious characters. On the "hottest day of one of the hottest summers on record", Federico Desideri, a young journalist full of hope but with few satisfactions, is given the task by the editor of the niche magazine he contributes to, to travel to Rome to interview a famous director, author of a blockbuster film centered around a memorable, charming scoundrel. Federico will soon discover that the director is in hiding, but in return, during a social event, he will be introduced to the man who is said to have been the model for that character: Barry Volpicelli. A sort of psychopomp halfway between a magic piper and the Bruno Cortona of the film "Il Sorpasso", Barry will lead Federico to an enchanted place: Paradise, an immense compound of villas and ramshackle bungalows on the Lazio coast, where he lives in the company of a small group of old freaks, both amiable and eccentric. An ambassador who accumulates discount products, a retired gynecologist raising ornamental chickens, Prince Gelasio Aldobrandi who - possessed by a perennial "mystico-heraldic" anxiety - pursues the unattainable dream of an heir, a lesbian couple who long for the days when they were invited to the Vatican by Pope Ratzinger, a former beauty queen who accuses the entire Italian cinema of stealing her ideas, and, last but not least, the first and second Mrs. Volpicelli. Amid endless conversations of delirious futility, and a night in which someone tries to kill one of the guests, between the arrival of a famous influencer and a suspicious death, there are many things young Federico will see and learn during his stay at Paradise. Until the moment he realizes he can, or does not want to, leave.