Voltati Eugenio / Eugenio

Luigi Comencini: Voltati Eugenio / Eugenio (IT/FR 1980). Francesco Bonelli (Eugenio).

IT/FR 1980. Prod.: Achille Manzotti per Intercontinental Film Company, Les Films du Losange, Gaumont.

    Director: Luigi Comencini. Sog., Scen.: Luigi Comencini, Massimo Patrizi. F.: Carlo Carlini - colour. M.: Nino Baragli. Scgf.: Paola Comencini. Mus.: Fiorenzo Carpi.
    Int.: Saverio Marconi (Giancarlo), Dalila Di Lazzaro (Fernanda), Francesco Bonelli (Eugenio), Memè Perlini (Baffo), Bernard Blier (grandfather Eugenio), Dina Sassoli (grandmother Anna), Gisella Sofio (grandmother Edvige), José Luis de Villalonga (Tristano).

    105 min

    DCP from Faso Film

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Life First! The Cinema of Luigi Comencini.

    Introduced by Emiliano Morreale

    Viewed with subtitles in English by Sub-Ti Londra at Cinema Modernissimo, 28 June 2025.

Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025): "“Why have children? They are no use to the family, and society doesn’t want them. I know why you have them: to photograph them, to give them a pat on the cheek, to take them for a walk, to take Super8 films of them, and compare them to other children. Like dogs.” This is one of the characters in Voltati Eugenio, perhaps the film which most clearly expresses the link between Comencini’s portrayal of children and his bitter vision of Italian society. 

"Ten-year-old Eugenio is in a car with a friend of his parents, the foolish clown Baffo, who is supposed to take him to the airport. After a falling out, Baffo abandons him on the street and his parents go looking for him. Meanwhile, flashbacks reveal the negligence, loneliness, and abandonment that the child has always suffered."

"Following L’ingorgo, an apocalyptic film about humanity destroying itself, a tombstone for the commedia all’italiana underpinned by a core of humanity and compassion, here the director seems to be addressing the disaster caused by the children of 1968 now that they are parents and every impulse of the youth movement had been extinguished."

"The tone is not plaintive: rather it is a surreal and melancholic dance accompanied by the music of Fiorenzo Carpi (reminiscent of that of Carlos Saura’s Cría cuervos, 1977). Comencini does not spare anyone, least of all the older generation, even if he understands almost everybody’s reasons (with the exception of the bourgeois, middle-aged grandparents)."

"For him, observing children also meant exploring class relations (the rich, the former peasants, the underclass) and gender (the dynamics between couples are sharply observed). In this film, being on the side of children ultimately means also being something of an anarchist." Emiliano Morreale (Bologna 2025)

AA: Luigi Comencini in Voltati Eugenio tells the story of the friendship of two abandoned children: Eugenio and Guerrino, both 10+ years old.

Guerrino, from a large and poor family, lives in conditions of child labour. His father sends him out as a street hawker, and if he fails to bring home the required sum, he gets a whipping.

Eugenio's parents were young radicals in the year 1968, and Eugenio is the result of un amour des barricades. The parents consider his birth an accidental discharge, and they do their best to avoid responsibility. Eugenio does not call them mum and dad but by their first names Fernanda and Giancarlo. 

Eugenio's grandparents seem to be more committed to him than his parents. Fernanda comes from a grand bourgeois background and Giancarlo from the middle class. Giancarlo's parents are the dearest to Eugenio.

Fernanda and Giancarlo have been activists for all the right causes, at 18 about to start a revolution, and Fernanda is passionate in feminist commitment. But in their family life they are cases of arrested development.

Living in the countryside with Giancarlo's parents, Eugenio has grown fond with animals, and he brings his pet bunny, duck, hen and turtle with him to the city. In passing, Giancarlo learns from Guerrino's father that Eugenio will become a veterinarian, a fact of which he has had no clue.

The film is structured as a chase story. Eugenio is left on the roadside by a friend of the parents who got fed up with Eugenio's caprices. During the chase we learn the whole story in flashbacks, in a jumbled timeline which starts gradually to make sense.

Eugenio is the story of child neglect. I was also thinking about The Invisible Child by Tove Jansson and the story of the lost child in Luis Buñuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté.

When the family finally finds the lost child they turn their backs on him again. In the finale Eugenio abandons his family, only followed by a loyal dog.

A clean image and vibrant colour in the DCP from Faso Film.