Mark Reviews Movies: MONDOCANE

Mondocane, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 19, 2022

At some unspecified point in the future, the Italian city of Taranto is severely divided by class in Mondocane. Those who have wealth live seemingly normal lives among civilization, and those who do not survive among the ruins caused by toxic industrialization. Co-writer/director Alessandro Celli creates a convincing, if not functionally explained, dystopia here, but a story with so much political potential gradually becomes more and more formulaic, until the underlying ideas stop mattering.

The focal point is a pair of young friends, named Pietro (Dennis Protopapa) and Cristian (Giuliano Soprano)—both of whom are orphans and have become akin to indentured servants to a fisherman in the poor part of the city. They dream of joining a local gang called the Ants.

Pietro is given that chance when the Ants' leader Hothead (Alessandro Borghi) enlists the boy to burn down a rival drug manufacturer inside a pet shop (He gets the eponymous nickname "Dogworld" after the store's name, while Cristian gets his less-flattering nickname on account of the seizures from which he suffers). Pietro and Cristian eventually become Ants, but the former's eagerness to join quickly sours after a fatal robbery.

Despite being initially mocked and dismissed by the gang's members and leadership, Cristian's loyalty to the gang, shown in some cruel and violent acts, makes him a favorite of Hothead. Meanwhile, a girl named Sabrina (Ludovia Nasti), currently living in and employed at an orphanage, becomes a rescue project for a local policewoman (played by Barbara Ronchi), who is investigating the arson and believes the girl might know who committed the crime.

The world—technically, worlds—surrounding these characters is far more intriguing than the assorted tensions and conflicts that arise between them. The two boys live on a coastline with rows of steel mills occupying the shore, and a "sterilization squad" hunts down and rounds up "strays"—children without families or homes—in the horrific suggestion of a class-based eugenics program.

In such a place, a gang is the only source of any kind of stability. There's a fascinating contradiction in scenes of Hothead happily teaching and playing with kids, juxtaposed with him using them as his foot soldiers and assassins.

Otherwise, such details of characterization don't seem to concern Celli and co-screenwriter Antonio Leotti, who quickly fill the plot with various conflicts in need of simple resolution. Among others, Hothead wants the troublesome policewoman out of the way (There's a suggestion of a past relationship between her and the gang that's ignored), but the central focus is the mounting clash between the basically kind Pietro and his ambitious pal. Mondocane hints at much deeper dynamics and struggles than these, so the movie reducing all of this to an extended climactic chase is a disappointment—albeit an expected one.

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