Amici come noi (2014)

Pio and Amedeo are two close friends in their thirties and business partners in a rather unusual funeral-services company in Monte Sant’Angelo, in the province of Foggia. Pio is about to marry Rosa, a young elementary-school teacher, and after the wedding they plan to move to Belluno together. Amedeo, on the other hand, is still single and given to various casual flings with different women. A few days before the wedding, during his bachelor party, Pio receives and sees a steamy video of his future bride being shared online. Pio decides to leave her, but since they live in a small rural town, the whole town soon finds out, and someone even paints a graffiti depicting Pio with horns. Although Rosa, backed by her family, denies having cheated on Pio—even during a moment of impaired judgment at her bachelorette party—Pio is blinded by disappointment and, egged on by his friend, refuses to accept any explanations, incurring all of Rosa’s mother’s wrath. At this point, Amedeo persuades him to leave Foggia for Rome, in the old Rolls-Royce that Amedeo’s uncle had rented as the wedding car for Pio and Rosa. The two intend to ask the wealthy uncle for €30,000 to open a funeral home in Rome. But the uncle refuses, so the two friends decide to kidnap his beloved parrot, Onofrio, so they can blackmail him. With the help of two friends of Amedeo’s, who have put him and Pio up, they demand a ransom, but unfortunately the parrot chokes to death on the toothpick from a pork chop. Meanwhile, the loan shark Cosimo, to whom Amedeo is indebted for the money to open the funeral business in Monte Sant’Angelo, follows him all the way to Rome. Amedeo hands over the Rolls-Royce—which is worth far more than the debt—to get rid of him once and for all. Amedeo and Pio then decide to leave the capital and arrive in Milan, where Amedeo dreams of trying out for AC Milan. There, Pio discovers that the story about Rosa’s steamy video was actually just a prank: Amedeo had staged the whole thing with the help of his Spanish friend Laura, who had gotten a henna tattoo on her buttocks identical to Rosa’s permanent one and had taken advantage of her resemblance to Rosa. He had done it because he didn’t want Pio to move to Belluno with Rosa: Amedeo would then have been left alone in their hometown, having also been an orphan for two years. Pio is initially angry with Amedeo, but they make up and set off together for Amsterdam, where Pio and Rosa were supposed to spend their honeymoon. After a series of misunderstandings, the two friends happen to run into Rosa and her friend Marika, who catch sight of Pio, dazed after taking hallucinogenic mushrooms, in the window of a prostitute. Rosa therefore abandons the idea of getting close to Pio again, no longer wanting any contact with him. Back in Puglia, with the help of his dearest friend, Pio apologizes to Rosa by serenading her in front of the whole town. After forgiving him, she finally decides to marry him and stay in Foggia instead of moving to Belluno. Amedeo, who has meanwhile begun a relationship with his friend Laura and has also taken on responsibility for her son, tries to make amends for the chaos he caused between Pio and Rosa by giving them a gift: Modà, the newlyweds’ favorite band, who play the priests at the wedding Mass and sing during the service, while all the guests dance in choreography that is simple but improbably spontaneous.