Perfect Strangers

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2019 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

In the company of friends and family, identities can be unveiled from the secrets of your smart phone through the vagaries of social media.

The Perfect Strangers, a clever Italian film, is celebrated through hip convo and yummy foods that tell the evoking drama of a bunch of friends in their middle ages. Three couples and a bachelor. They gathered altogether for a house dinner while challenging each other for a truth or consequence game by sharing the contents of their mobile phones. 

Eva is a psychologist with a plastic surgeon husband Rocco. The lovely couple hosted the dinner in their apartment with a scenic balcony to watch the eclipse that affected their lunacy. Albeit the tension rises after Eva rifles through the handbag of her seventeen-year-old daughter Sophia who is allegedly banging her boyfriend.

The rest of the friends are not as affluent as Rocco and Eva. While Cosimo drives a taxi and dreams of becoming rich. His new wife, Bianca, a veterinarian adores him and sees no problem with their social status. Peppe arrives last and alone saying his virtual girlfriend has fever.

Lele and Carlotta express little warmth towards each other which may also explain Carlotta's drinking problem. The couple has two children, named Bruno and Rosa. The widow mother of Lele lives with the problematic couple of which Carlotta loathes about it. She even took off her panty before going for the dinner, a challenge she makes with his textmate while flirting with her. 

When Eva has suggested the crazy game, everyone has agreed to it. All cellular phones have been submitted atop the table and incoming messages must be read aloud. If someone receives a call, it should be verbalized on a loud speaker. No one is thrilled with the idea. However, refusing the challenge means conceding to a guilt or admitting a secret. As everyone played the game, all of them eat famous Italian foods and drink wine.

Cosimo gets the first message when he receives a text, saying, "I want your body". Everyone cajoles and mimics it. As secrets one by one is revealed, the girls are talking about Eva's breasts augmentation and Carlotta desires her mother-in-law to stay in retirement home. Lele is worried about his mistress who sends sexy photos every night at exactly ten in the evening. He connives with Peppe to switch with his phone since their devices are similar, and for Peppe to pretend that it's his girlfriend. As they swap, now the group of friends eats their main course, but more secrets are unearthed from their phones, even if the tiramisu desserts never get dished up. 

The premise of the film cleverly zeroes in on fear and substance. That being found out or "mabuko" in Filipino  is a fear in itself. Before secrets are shared by friends and between couples, but now it can be discovered through one's phone that makes one even a complete stranger to your loved ones. Our smart phone becomes the repository of our illicit behaviors, and the moment it's exposed, all is laid bare and with neither security nor protection, then you become vulnerable to judgments.

The best scene in this socially relevant movie speaks to the idea of loyalty of friendship over neutrality of devices. When Lele covers up for Peppe and allows a major revelation of his identity, he falls on his shoulders. It's also the only moment when anyone acts in the name of friendship and accounts to become adults to deal with mature situations.

In a quiet way, Perfect Strangers tells us the narrative how gadgets and social media have taken over our relationships and private lives. That despite the odds, friends' secrets would remain constant. We should also remember that all of us revolve with three lives - one public, one private, and one secret lives.

This contemporary Italian movie has a global resonance, particularly in the Philippines such as parents living with their married children composing an extended family. Homosexuality is closely forbidden to be discussed publicly before, but now it is slowly accepted in movies. Themes on teenagers committing fornication while adults practicing infidelity in marriage remains strong in the film. Perfect Strangers pulls off a strong message to rise above postmodern dialectics and temptations caused by human technological inventions and innovations through social media that can create havoc damages to our daily lives.