Reviews

This is based on the true story of disillusioned Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa (Elio Germano) who came up with the idea of setting up his own nation state. He didn't just want to buy an old rock somewhere, instead he recruited his muscly pal Maurizio (Leonardo Lidl) and dragged some oil-rig style supports half a kilometere outside territorial waters and began to build. Initially it was little better than a diving platform - and a fairly unsheltered one at that, but gradually and with the help of "Neumann" (Tom Wlaschiha) and sceptical pregnant international lawyer - with whom he already a fairly chequered past - "Gabriella" (Matilda De Angelis) it begins to become something of an unique tourist destination with no licensing laws and fairly accessible for nearby Rimini's boat-owing community. What's next? Well needless to say the Government are taking quite a dim view of his enterprise and so he and "Gabriella" decide that they need some formal form of recognition of their independent status. The only way they can get that is to approach the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, but what chance they will even engage with the idea that a glorified oil rig located six kilometres off the coast of Italy could conceivably be recognised? Moreover, how long before the admiral (Feredrico Pacifico) stationed on his heavily armed cruiser fifty years away from their refuge gets orders to just make this problem go away? On the face of it, this has a little of the "Passport to Pimlico" (1949) as it pits the plucky "islanders" against the might of the state, but once we have established the parameters of the story the plot rather hastily fizzes away and doesn't really focus so well on some of the more interesting detail from the latter stages of their campaign, nor on the most significant, long-term, ramification of his maritime adventure. Still, there are some entertaining performances all around here, not least with Fabrizio Bentivoglio's mischievous "Restivo" and from the on-form De Angelis, and there's definitely an agreeable amount of ingenuity on display too, and I did quite enjoy it.