Ovosodo (1997)

Piero Mansani is a boy who lives in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Livorno. From childhood, Piero has to face the pain and difficulties caused by his mother’s death, finding himself straight away in the adult world, one of discoveries, disillusionments, and first loves. In his teacher Giovanna, he finds the person closest to him, because she understands and appreciates him and instills in him a love of learning. Piero cannot count on his family’s support: his father is a former dockworker serving several prison sentences; his stepmother, Mara, is too neurotic and disappointed with life to understand him; and his brother has a severe intellectual disability. Making things worse is the working-class neighborhood where Piero lives, the Ovosodo district, where life is a jungle and you have to know how to navigate a thousand unpleasant situations. Piero goes through a troubled, confused adolescence, and only really begins to live when, in his final year of high school, he meets Tommaso, a boy who lives for the moment, resents any kind of discipline, and sweeps him up in a whirlwind of adventures. Despite his apparently reckless nature, Tommaso cannot help being influenced by his very well-off family, who decide, after high school, to send him to study in the United States despite his lack of interest. Tommaso decides to accept and leave his eventful life behind. Piero thus realizes that life is different for everyone and can bring unexpected pain or disappointment. The great emotional carousel of life finally starts turning for Piero: first he dates Lisa, Tommaso’s beautiful cousin, a girl with a volatile temperament, with whom Piero has an on-again, off-again long-distance relationship that ends in inevitable failure. Then Piero begins a relationship with Susy, the neighbor he meets again after years apart, who has always been in love with him. Piero and Susy marry, and a daughter is born, named Giovanna—the same name as Piero’s teacher and friend, who committed suicide by swallowing a large quantity of pills after falling into a deep depression because Tommaso had seduced her and then failed to return her feelings. Piero works in a factory and earns his high-school diploma as an external candidate (after failing his final year when he attended with his friend Tommaso), also thanks to Susy’s encouragement. Piero finally manages to find his place in life and build a family, living peacefully. Even so, now and then certain thoughts and a certain melancholy that the protagonist cannot control return to his consciousness, accompanied by a physical tightness in his throat, as if, Piero says, he had eaten “a hard-boiled egg, shell and all.”