La Pazza Gioia aka Like Crazy, written and directed by Paolo Virzi

La Pazza Gioia aka Like Crazy, written and directed by Paolo Virzi

                Like Crazy has won no fewer than 29 awards.

                Yet, it is not a glorious, sensational, virtuoso, spectacular feature.

                This is the story of two women who escape a mental institution and try to avoid being taken back.

               

                Beatrice Morandini Valdirana is the mastermind, the one most responsible for the Great Escape…

She is a resident of the facility for the mentally challenged, if this is near the proper name we need to use today.

Her manner could be perceived as obnoxious, overbearing or, if one has compassion, one could see her as a distressed, not crazier than most person, if we compare her with The Donald who just claimed, yesterday, that he would be the one to run, with all that weight around him, and get the shooter in Florida with…his bare hands.

In other words, both heroes of this sometimes-endearing narrative are saner than the leader of the free world.

Evidently, they have issues to deal with, as we all are, and at times, it feels like they are made to suffer more, just because they had been forced to deal with extreme adversity and trauma and suffered from

                Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

When young Donatella Morelli arrives at this sanatorium, Beatrice is curious and looks into her file.

As she is caught, the “patient” starts talking about the fact that the building belongs to her family and it is very hard at times to distinguish between what is real and what has been fabricated, but that is a familiar philosophical, existential question:

                What is real?

Beatrice walks along the corridor, when newly arrived Donatella asks her for some information.

The latter is very proud to have been mistaken for a doctor and of course, she gives expert advice to the young woman.

When they run away, the women encounter a pony-tailed man, with many pornographic magazines in the glove compartment of his small utility vehicle, willing to become very intimate with the apparently available strangers.

Only, he is the one trapped, as Donatella drives the car away and leaves the libidinous character out in the cold, until at a later stage he recuperates his vehicle, from the parking lot of a fancy restaurant, where the two heroes have just had a meal that they cannot pay for and are chased out of the door.

Following this unhappy incident, the always intrepid Beatrice arrives at a bank, where with distinguished, self-assured, amusing, possessed manner she asks to have money given to her, on account of her being a notable, respectable noble, rich woman – or was it a deity she claimed to be?-who has so much money, but not with her today.

When they call the manager and he refuses to condone and provide the demanded sum, the woman is in rage and she attacks these ignoble, ruffians, despicable men that will have to pay for this…she only asked for a few thousand euros and they cause such a kerfuffle…wait and see what will happen to them!

This is an amusing narrative, but there is much to feel emotional, compassionate about, even to cry.

Donatella has a very sad story to tell.

She has a child and when she went with the baby to show him to his father, the latter not just rejected him, but made such a violent, ugly, atrocious scene in public, when he accused the woman of being a “puttana” and threw her some money with disgust and protesting that this cannot be his child.

Donatella is devastated, ravaged by the astonishing reaction of the father of the baby and keeps mumbling that he never even looked at his child and after this she feels there is nothing left to live for…

This is a moment when crying follows laughter and jocular moments and the result of the breakdown will not be delved into here.

Pazza di Gioia is distributed with the title Like Crazy, but without knowing Italian, one could argue that the original title is much better, even if the women are not exactly Crazy with Happiness, perhaps on the contrary.

Yes, there are many moments when the two heroes love their Getaway and it feels like they are in Flow, in the Zone, when watching the stars near the beach, having a meal in that lavishing restaurant, riding in the car of the sex offender and in so many other instances of their magical escape.

However, it is also true that they are not Crazy with Joy, but have been rendered mad- not as crazy as The Donald, obviously- by the extreme unhappiness in their lives in the “normal, healthy „world that has rejected them.