Perfect Strangers

Director: Paolo Genovese

3 April 2023

See

Him: Perfect strangers a 2016 Italian film directed by Paolo Genovese is about a dinner party with 4 couples. Minimal backstory is set up as they gather but enough to develop when one suggests they have their phones as open books sharing aloud messages, emails and calls on speaker as if they have nothing to hide. All do.

Her: Perfetti Sconosciuti, Perfect Strangers, by Paolo Genovese 2016, a one scene movie of a friends dinner party where cheeky game that never happened could have ended friendship for all of them at once…if the truth was to ever be uncovered.

Think

Him: The characters have life long friends approaching middle age who seemingly know everything about each other, and share candidly about divorce, relationship problems, therapy, body issues, career com-plications and family dynamics. The kind of friends who already know what the other has to say or what they’re up to, and the dinner part is a perfunctory catch up. 

The conceit which takes place during a lunar eclipse is that if you have nothing to hide you’ll be candid about explaining each phone ping. It veers melodrama but at core feels true to interpersonal relationships, for better and worse.

Her: I think I’m starting to like theatrical style movies more and more. The simple setting is sometimes more than enough to tell a complicated disposition. This one is not ground breaking but entertaining enough. The ending left me wondering how happy these people are living their lives constantly lying to the people they claim to love. 

Feel

Him: I relate to the plastic surgeon’s umbridge with participating in the social experiment. Our phones are Pandora’s box and the secrets they contain are like a diary, or defernding yourself against Orwellian thoughtcrime. Not that you shpouldn’t have done it, but you shouldn’t have even thought about doing it. And those who are the most judgemental correlates with the most guilt but perhaps better at hiding it or mayber making others explain themselves. The best defence is a good offence. I read an article that Perfetti Sconosciuti has been adapted 20 times in languages other than English. A Big Mac index of a standardised movie that could show cultural differences on universal issues. Yet I wouldn’t want to watch the Hollywood version, unless it was directed by Woody Allen. 

Her: Where does one’s personal space end and the other’s begin? Everybody has skeletons in their closets and I know I'm not a saint but wouldn’t it be better if this game has really happened in reality, not the full moon fuelled imaginarium? The ending didn’t give me a sense of relief and I hope this was the creators’ intention.