Marking Their Territory: Male Adolescence Abroad in Recent Italian Teen Film

Abstract

Author(s): Paul, Dan | Abstract: Due to its alignment with popular culture, the teen film is often considered a feminized genre or mode, one ideally addressed to, and consumed by, a primarily female audience. And yet, a number of recent Italian teen films privilege the male experience of adolescence and, as a result, draw the gendered paradigm of the genre into question. In this article, I examine the representation of adolescent masculinity in four films produced over the course of about a decade: Giovanni Veronesi’s Che ne sar a di noi [What Will Become of Us] (2004), Francesca Archibugi’s Lezioni di volo [Flying Lessons] (2007), Francesco Falaschi’s Last Minute Marocco [Last Minute Morocco] (2007), and Luigi Cecinelli’s Niente puo fermarci [Nothing Can Stop Us] (2013). The young men in these films prove their masculinity, and demonstrate their willingness to conform to society’s norms, by engaging in heterosexual intercourse during journeys abroad. When they eventually break off their relationships with women and create homosocial utopias, however, they express their suspicion of, and dissatisfaction with, heteronormative coupledom and marriage. The preference for male-male friendships suggests a significant alteration of the classical melodramatic denouement which so often privileges the heterosexual couple and the promulgation of the heteronormative family. The male adolescents of these films thus use women strategically, calling on them to make them men—often, though not solely, through sexual intercourse—before casting them aside on their way to adulthood.