Perfect Strangers (2016 film)


Perfect Strangers is a 2016 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Paolo Genovese. It was released in Italy on February 11, 2016.
The film was a critical and commercial success, winning the David di Donatello in the Best Film Category and grossing more than €16 million in Italy. It has been remade in many countries including Spain, Mexico, South Korea, France, Hungary, Greece, China, Russia, Armenia, Germany and Poland.
On 15 July 2019, it was included in the Guinness World Records as it became the most remade film in cinema history, with a total of 18 versions of the film.

Plot

Eva and Rocco, husband and wife, invite their best friends to dinner: Cosimo and Bianca, Lele and Carlotta, and Peppe. The hosts are living a period of crisis, a situation exasperated by Eva's conflicted relationship with her teenage daughter Sofia, who finds an outlet for all her worries and needs only with her father; Cosimo and Bianca are a couple of newlyweds, he a taxi driver and she a veterinarian, who want to have a child; Lele and Carlotta are a couple who have been married for years with two children and various problems; Peppe is a divorced former physical education teacher who is currently unemployed. Peppe had promised to present to his friends Lucilla, his new partner, who unfortunately could not come to dinner because of a bad fever. During dinner, the friends discuss a couple who recently separated because of a betrayal discovered by his wife on reading a message on her husband's cell phone. After telling this story, Eva suggests everyone play a game: to place their mobile phone on the table and to accept that the content of all the communications they will receive during the evening is revealed to everyone present. After many hesitations, the friends accept the intrigue, but unfortunately what was supposed to be a game soon turns into a public confession of all their most intimate secrets.
It turns out that Rocco, a plastic surgeon by profession, has long been in psychoanalysis, while his wife Eva, herself a psychoanalyst, knows nothing about it. Eva, on the other hand, wants to undergo breast reconstruction, but has made sure that the operation is not performed by her husband but by a famous surgeon, Blanchard; Rocco, after giving his daughter a box of condoms, gives her advice over the phone for her first sexual experience; Bianca is still in touch with her ex without her husband's knowledge, but only to help him face a new relationship; Cosimo, in addition to impregnating his lover, has an affair with Eva ; Carlotta, unbeknownst to her husband, has contacted a nursing home to get rid of her mother-in-law, who lives in their house; both Carlotta and Lele have online affairs.
Lele, to protect himself from the inevitable arrival of an erotic photo of his mistress, privately asks Peppe to exchange their mobile phones, as they have the same model; while avoiding discovery of his affair, Lele receives texts and calls from a certain Lucio, who, thinking he's talking to Peppe, declares that he misses his kisses. Everyone therefore thinks that Lele has a homosexual extramarital affair. The friends react very strongly to this discovery, especially Cosimo, apparently sorry that Lele never revealed his alleged homosexuality even to his best friends, but actually revealing deep-seated homophobia. Later, Peppe reveals the exchange of telephones and thus his own homosexuality, and that this was the real reason why he lost his teaching post, and he declares that he will not introduce Lucio to his friends as he wants to protect him from their reactions. Finally, it turns out that years earlier Carlotta, while driving drunk, caused an accident in which a man died, although it was Lele who took responsibility for the manslaughter in order to avoid his wife's imprisonment and thus the ruin of their family.
At the end of the evening, it is revealed that in reality the mobile phone game never happened, thanks to strong opposition from Rocco: the guests return home, after what was an ordinary dinner with friends. Everyone goes back to their own lies: Peppe is excluded from a five-a-side football match with an excuse by Lele, Cosimo and Rocco and, at the request of his friends, Peppe promises that at the next opportunity he will introduce them to the non-existent Lucilla ; Cosimo, in the car with Bianca, runs through the messages of his lover Marika and responds to a message from Eva, who in the meantime removes the earrings given her as a gift by Cosimo himself; Carlotta puts on the panties that her lover had asked her to take off and Lele secretly looks at the photo he received from his online lover.

Cast

The film was number-one on its opening week in Italy, with.
On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 77% based on reviews from 13 critics.

Accolades

Remakes

, remakes were underway in Qatar and Sweden. In February 2017, The Weinstein Company acquired the rights to an English-language remake. In December 2019, Issa Rae was announced to write and star in the US remake. Rae will produce the film along with Spyglass Media Group, a subsidiary of Lantern Entertainment, which acquired the assets of The Weinstein Company after its bankruptcy. In October 2018, an Arabic-language remake was announced to be developed by companies based in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon, respectively.