Parky At the Pictures (10/7/2026)

(Review of The Last One For the Road)

THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD.

Italian road comedies are something of a rarity. Among the best set on the peninsula are Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (1962), Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), Alberto Sordi's In viaggio con papà (1982), Enrico Oldoini's Una botta di vita (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's On Tour (1990), Rocco Papaleo's Basilicata Coast to Coast (2010), while Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place (2011) strayed further afield. Joining the itinerary is

Francesco Sossai's The Last One For the Road, which the sophomore director and co-scenarist Adriano Candiago have based on their own experiences.

Killing time while waiting for a friend's plane to land in Treviso, fiftysomethings Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) neck several bottles of beer before discovering it's a non-alcoholic brand. They decamp to an American bar, where Carlobianchi bums a cigarette off a German tourist looking for the `ghost' Lisbon-Treviso-Budapest highway and Doriano throws up after scarfing the shrimp cocktail of a woman on her hen night.

Having given some traffic cops the slip by going into `stealth mode', the friends come across some students celebrating the graduation of Giulia Antonia (Giulia Bertasi). Following them to a club,

Carlobianchi and Doriano take pity on Neapolitan architecture student, Giulio (Filippo Scotti), who leaves suddenly after watching his beloved do cocaine in the washroom. The lads persuade him to join them in a quiet bar, where a musician strums his acoustic guitar as they tell him about Genio (Andrea Pennacchi), the third musketeer who had gone to Austrian brothels with them and scoffed snails and polenta on cigarette and petrol smuggling runs to Slovenia. They had known him since his farmer father had been crushed by a tractor when he was a boy, but he had run out on them just before the 2008 financial crash and laid low in Argentina.

Giulio insists he has to go home to collect his laptop for a tutorial, but Carlobianchi drives him to Treviso airport, where the pals get into a fight after learning that Genio's flight is due to land at Venice Airport. They coax Giulio into joining them for a sentimental trip to Mery's Tavern, only to discover it's closed down. He asks what happened with Genio and they tell him that they used to run a scam at the glasses factory where they all worked. Each week, they would take the cast-offs out of the trash and sell them at Genio's mother's house. No one suspected anything and they made a tidy sum over the years. But the company got wind of the graft and Genio fled to Argentina, having destroyed any evidence linked to his friends and having buried his share of the loot in a tin box.

Carlobianchi reveals that he quickly spent his share (buying the Jaguar S-Type they've been riding in) and had to move back with his parents after his marriage failed. The factory closed during the credit crunch and workers lost their homes. But Carlobianchi and Doriano managed to survive and are now keen to reconnect with Genio, who is free to return because the statute of limitations on his crime has expired and they hope he will give them a handout. Over a salami cuts lunch, Carlobianchi explains why the theory of marginal utility doesn't apply to last drinks before Giulio asks if they can go home.

A comfort break lands the trio outside the villa owned by Count Bugnello (Denis Fasolo), who mistakes them for the surveyors he has been expecting. Giulio uses his architectural nous to convince him of their credentials and the Count is pleased when he peruses some maps and says there are grounds on which to appeal to prevent the Lisbon-Treviso-Budapest highway from destroying his Renaissance garden. After they sample some daiquiris, Giulio admires a capriccio landscape on the wall, while Carlobianchi passionately kisses the Count in order secure some generous travel expenses.

Slipping out before the real surveyors arrive, the imposters go to see Stefi, a prostitute who gives Giulio his first sexual experience, while Doriano opens the coffee table book on the Brion Memorial that he had bought as a graduation gift for Giulia Antonia. He returns to the car with a sheepish grin and gets drunk enough to dance with Carlobianchi in a quiet bar. As they drive on, however, Doriano spots Genio out of the car window and they follow him to a supermarket, where he's been doing some late-night shopping. He has little to say for himself and the trio feels let down and hits a bar to process their emotions.

They decide to call on Genio and find the door to his apartment open. Inside a box of photos and mementos, they find a map indicating the burial site and they drive there to find him hammering the concrete floor of an unfinished building. Giulio tells him that there's no point digging, as the foundations were so deep that the box would have been found or trashed. Feeling deflated, they seek out a bar, where Carlobianchi spots Primo (Gianni Da Re) on the fruit machine. He asks if the rumour was true that owner Cavalier Fadìga (Roberto Citran) had given him a Rolex when he retired from the glasses factory and he slowly raises his arm to show the timepiece beneath his sleeve. Barely able to walk, the sloshed threesome crash at Carlobianchi's place, with his mother chiding them for leading Giulio astray.

The next morning, Giulio calls Giulia Antonia in Verona and asks if they can meet up. She agrees and Carlobianchi and Doriano are proud of him. Listening across the patio, the former's father tells them to grow up, but Doriano shrugs that they're too old. They take a detour to the Brion Memorial and Giulio is amazed that they had never been to see something so significant on their doorstep. Rushing to the station, they bundle him on to the train with warm hugs, but the door closes and he fails to hear Carlobianchi's last piece of advice. Moreover, he's too engrossed in the selotaped map of their travels to notice the pair zooming alongside the track in the Jaguar and waving and shouting through the passenger window.

Heading back into town, Carlobianchi and Doriano buy cornets. The former complains that his tastes weird, as he had been expecting something bitter rather than sweet. As they cross a busy road, the ice cream gets dislodged and, as the credits roll, tyres splodge over it on the hot tarmac.

If ever a sequel was in order, a strong case could be made for this splendidly ramshackle odyssey, which often feels as though Gianni Di Gregorio had made a mellow midlife version of Stephen Frears's Mr Jolly Lives Next Door (1988). It scooped eight David di Donatello awards, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Producing, Casting, and Editing. Sergio Romano pipped Pierpaolo Capovilla to Best Actor, while Roberto Citran lost out as Best Supporting Actor for his prologue cameo as Cavalier Fadìga. Scandalously, neither

Massimiliano Kuveiller nor Marco Spigariol (aka Krano) won their respective cinematography and score, although the latter did pick up Best Song for `Ti', one of the many memorable musical moments that complement the meandering action to perfection.

Romano and Capovilla feel like old drinking buddies, as they seem to know what the other is going to say when they feel the need to speak. But

Filippo Scotti is anything but a third wheel, as he starts to shed Giulio's inhibitions and surprise his travelling companions when he begins to hold his own in the supping stakes. Wisely, Sossai discreetly leaves Giulio at Stefi's door, as venturing inside with him would have changed our perceptions. Similarly, Carlobianchi and Doriano come across as genial Beckettian rogues rather than dissolute pests, even when they gatecrash a late-night street celebration and usher the students into a seedy bar with pool tables. It's even difficult to hold them to account for their role in stealing from their workplace or for letting Genio carry the can in exile for all these years, as they've not had it easy themselves and they clearly don't mean any harm by drowning their regrets rather than their sorrows.

Cesare Zavattini, the theoretical father of neo-realism, once suggested that the perfect film would focus on a man to whom nothing happens. This beguiling vino-realismo picaresque could almost qualify, as Carlobianchi and Doriano bob along like corks as they're swept along on a tide of half-remembered memories in the hope of finding the next last drink to help them forget how life has actually turned out for them and their community. Despite the pervading tinge of melancholy, the pair never feel sorry for themselves, even as they relives moments from their inglorious past, such as those in the `Merica' montage, with its wonderfully eccentric strummed acoustic accompaniment.

By all accounts, Sossai and Candiago spent years collecting eavesdropped bon mots in various Italian bars. But the director has clearly also been keeping tabs on the Venetian countryside and the varied states of repair of the buildings that line its once bustling roads. Editor Paolo Cottignola employs relaxed rhythms to link these superbly photographed 35mm and Super 16mm images, while he also proves a dab hand at dropping in flashbacks, one of which sees Giulio replace Genio, as he tries to put himself in Carlobianchi and Doriano's shoes, while sending a note to himself not to take their example to heart. No one could mistake these two for role models, but they are hale fellows well met and it would be nice to spend further time in their company, even if they remain on a road to nowhere.