TO BE TWENTY: Young, Beautiful, Pissed Off… And Trapped

The 1970’s was the defin­i­tive decade for shock­ing downer end­ings in movies.  Whether you were watch­ing exploita­tion fare or main­stream Hollywood films, you could never be sure if the film you were watch­ing would have a sud­den, nasty string in the tail.  This was dou­bly true for European film­mak­ers, who had enjoyed a greater free­dom in this area for many years and didn’t hes­i­tate to get down with the 1970’s downbeat-ending zeitgeist.

Italy in par­tic­u­lar took to this trend nicely: the hor­ror and crime fare that Italy cranked out dur­ing this era is chock­ablock with shocker finales designed to send the viewer out fraz­zled.  To Be Twenty is per­haps the most infa­mous exam­ple of this trend amongst fans of Italian genre fare.  Even diehard grind­house afi­ciona­dos might find them­selves weak in the knees at the way this film pulls a bait-and-switch on the audience.

On the sur­face, To Be Twenty seems to be a fizzy blend of youth cul­ture cash-in and comedic sex­ploita­tion.  The first scene intro­duces us to our hero­ines, Tina (Lilli Carati) and Lia (Gloria Guida).  They are pen­ni­less but spir­ited as they wan­der their way through Rome.  Both have their rea­sons for drop­ping out of “the straight life”: hot-tempered Tina is rebelling against a bour­geois upbring­ing while Lia comes from hum­ble cir­cum­stances and is inter­ested in explor­ing the world.

The film fol­lows this duo as they make their way in and out of count­ess shady sit­u­a­tions.  They share an aver­sion to liv­ing by society’s rules and a love of good times (espe­cially sex) so they ulti­mately end up in a com­mune that Lia heard about.  Life isn’t easy but they’re both happy to live it on their own terms.  Unfortunately, the wrong kind of atten­tion falls on the com­mune — and this sets the stage for a tragic finale of the “punch to the gut” variety.

To Be Twenty is one of those films that is defined by the wal­lop its end­ing packs, for bet­ter or worse.  Nothing in the pre­ced­ing 80 min­utes of the film gives you any indi­ca­tion of what ter­rors the last 10 min­utes hold — and it leaves the viewer with a bone-chilling case of bad vibes.  As a result, this end­ing tends to color how the film is seen as a whole: some look at it as hav­ing a reac­tionary atti­tude towards its hero­ines, pos­si­bly even a sex­ist atti­tude.  This is unfor­tu­nate because another read­ing of the film sug­gests that those sorts of atti­tudes are exactly what the film is a pointed response to.

In fact, To Be Twenty is a real work of sub­ver­sive film­mak­ing.  A big part of this is the film­maker behind the direc­to­r­ial wheel: Fernando DiLeo was best known for a string of tough, darkly witty action films like Manhunt and Milan Calibre 9.  An impor­tant part of what made those films so spe­cial was how they also dou­bled as social cri­tiques, explor­ing how cor­rup­tion affected the work­ing class in Italy.  He pulls off a sim­i­lar trick in To Be Twenty, except this time his theme is how provin­cial atti­tudes are more dan­ger­ous to a soci­ety than the rebel­lious out­siders that its upstand­ing cit­i­zens fear and resent.  It’s par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing that he chose women for his main char­ac­ters, because it also allows him to work in sex­ism as part of the provin­cial atti­tudes he critiques.

That might sound a lit­tle overtly intel­lec­tual given how To Be Twenty devotes much of its time to exploita­tion tropes.  Carati and Guida were amongst the top sexbombs of Italian genre film­mak­ing dur­ing the mid-to-late 1970’s and DiLeo misses no chance to exploit their gor­geous physiques onscreen.  That said, it’s inter­est­ing to note how he often defies expec­ta­tions — a four­some sex scene involv­ing the two ladies ends with unex­pected speed when the men lose inter­est, leav­ing the women unsat­is­fied and frustrated.

There are also sev­eral scenes with the hero­ines being leered at by men where the men are painted in an unflat­ter­ing light and some­times even taunted by the women for their lech­er­ous atti­tudes.  In the spirit of Corman-style drive-in fem­i­nism, the women are the sex­ual aggres­sors and do things on their own terms.  It’s a telling touch that the most erotic scene involves the two mak­ing out with each other once the men have failed them.

With this in mind, per­haps it is best to view To Be Twenty as a film that uses seem­ingly innocu­ous gen­res — the youth cul­ture movie, the sex com­edy — as tools to dis­arm the audi­ence on the way to its slap-in-the-face end­ing. DiLeo deliv­ers the skin, broad humor and col­or­ful pho­tog­ra­phy expected from such films, even tart­ing up the sound­track with au-courant disco tunes.  The first two acts of the film might be light­hearted and full of comic scenes but there is also a sub­tle under­tone of unrest between the hero­ines and most mem­bers of straight soci­ety, who make a point of show­ing their resent­ment and dis­ap­proval of the two.

This under­cur­rent bub­bles to the sur­face when the police raid the com­mune and bring every­one in for ques­tion­ing.  Though these scenes are played for over-the-top humor, the text of these scenes rein­forces the idea that it’s very easy for respectable soci­ety to make a vic­tim of its out­siders — and that’s dou­bly true for the female out­siders.  Thus, the stage is set for the third act — which main­tains the same ‘out­siders vs. straights’ ten­sion but drops the humor entirely to take the audi­ence into dark, unnerv­ing territory.

Finally, it’s worth not­ing that the whiplash shock of the end­ing works so well because Lia and Tina are such like­able char­ac­ters.  Most of the periph­eral char­ac­ters in To Be Twenty are car­toons but DiLeo actu­ally takes the time to let us get to know our hero­ines: his best achieve­ment in this area is a stun­ning scene where a vis­it­ing doc­u­men­tary crew get the two hero­ines to reveal the back­sto­ries.  It’s a moment where the humor is com­pletely side­lined to show the hero­ines as think­ing, feel­ing human beings.

That amaz­ing scene is also a tes­ta­ment to how good Carati and Guida’s per­for­mances are.  Neither one relies on their looks to do the work for them. Carati brings a fiery energy to her work and shows a real knack for com­edy: one of her best scenes involves her get­ting a pro­fes­sor type all hot and both­ered.  Guida pro­vides a mem­o­rable con­trast to her onscreen part­ner by going the sub­tle route, pro­ject­ing an ethe­real sense of cool as the more thought­ful mem­ber of the duo.  A scene where she gen­tly rebuffs an attempted seduc­tion from a cus­tomer is one of her best moments here, a nicely under­stated piece of work.  By the time the end of the film arrives, their work has got­ten the viewer invested in these char­ac­ters — and that really adds a sting to their ulti­mate fates.

To sum up, To Be Twenty is every bit as shock­ing as you might have heard — but it’s there’s a gen­uine moti­va­tion behind the big shock and the sub­ver­sive agenda behind it is what gives the shock its real power.